I went visit friends for New Year’s Eve, and this book came up in conversation, and my friends had a copy of it. I ended up reading a bit of it, then reading a bit more, then probably staying up too late and reading the whole thing.
The book is based on the Enneagram, and they aren’t doing anything radically different from other books or blogs or Instagram accounts about the Enneagram. The book is much heavier on personality than fact – it’s written in a pretty chatty style, with pop culture references.
Being a human is messy as fuck, and Ones aren’t interested in all the shades of gray. Ones aim to manage primarily their own reality, as if they could perfect themselves by sheer force of will.
Any anger they feel, they direct at themselves, thinking that by suppression they will force themselves into the right shape, the right feelings, the right decisions, and the right thoughts. Think Aaron Burr from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s play Hamilton: “I am the one thing in life I can control.” While Ones are constantly taking note of everything that requires fixing in the world around them, passing judgement on the people, places, and systems they are confronted with, there is no one they pass more judgement on or seek more to change than themselves.
I’ve taken the Enneagram twice, a few years apart. The first time, it came up with One and Three, and the second time it came up with One and Six. The passage above is from the description of how Ones fit into the Intuitive Triad. There are some pieces of that passage that I totally identify with, but they’re put in a somewhat negative light.