Thursday, August 23, 2007

test of personality

hi, my name is lishun and i am a rehabilitated personality test junkie.

i've done almost all the tests at emode and exhausted the questionnaires at queendom. i even made up a personality test that was published in the school mag. at the time, i thought it was just fun and games and nothing else. however, on hindsight, what it really was was a desperate search for identity, an affirmation of who i thought i was.

my mother asked me a personality quiz question just a few minutes ago. as she read the analysis of my answer out loud, it came to me that while i used to believe that some innate quality in me must have influenced the choices i made, it's just as possible that the results of the tests i took must have influenced the person that i am.

how ridiculous! to think that some human-created test had the right to tell me who i should be! besides, all those tests are designed to come up with an answer to satisfy the majority who are, incidentally, mostly women. how tragic then that we are so insecure as to find our place where a test tells us we should be.

anyway, all that prompted me to reflect on how much of who i am and how i do things was really dependent on the results of the tests i took so long ago. perhaps i've been bound by peer pressure for much longer than i thought.

my mother told me she felt like the test was very accurate. i felt it was totally irrelevant to me, and i wasn't afraid to say so. it made me think of all the times in the past when i had willed a test result to be accurate and then made "suitable" changes in my life to make sure it really was. for a moment i could remember exactly how it felt to need approval to be myself.

right now, i am secure of who i am because i know where my security lies. it's no longer in a questionnaire that is designed not only to please but also to gather important marketing information for sponsors. i skip the quiz pages in the magazine and i have stopped visiting websites offering personality tests.

those questions and pages will fade to yellow and crumble to ashes but my identity in Christ? that will last forever.

lishun at 11:20 PM

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