Essaouira

Talking to a friend about Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies Quiz, I remembered that I had taken the quiz myself, a long time ago. Turns out that I am a Rebel who, as per the definition, “resists internal and external expectations.”

Now, let me be very clear. I am no Rebel, or perhaps I should say, no regular Rebel.

I see myself as a fairly conformist personality, chugging along gently, playing her own tunes, drinking and vastly savoring her daily chai, dreaming and meandering and sauntering along… occasionally going off into a reverie.

I have hardly rebelled against anything. My parents are the sweetest people in this world, and they didn’t deny me anything I wanted. I realized quick that it was far easier to ask for what I wanted (and get it too!) than put up a fight OR sneak off behind their back OR lie about it. All I needed to do was ASK, and they would say YES. It was that simple. Why rebel, in that case?

It was the same response when I presented a guy to them, explaining that he was The One. They were perfectly happy about it. Now, career. I picked a perfectly traditional line of study (Civil Engineering), and went on to find a job in Software Development. Nothing remotely unorthodox or daring about any of this so far. Of course, I quit all of it and went to study Mass Communication when I was 29. Began a new career with a reduced pay, and all that. And now, children. Neither my parents nor my husband’s have ever asked me — No kids? Why not?

So you see, my life has been pretty vanilla.

So where does the Rebel come in?

I suppose my method of rebellion has been fairly blah. I broke zero norms because I saw none. I didn’t overcome any kind of societal/familial pressure because I hardly ever felt that I was subject to any.

I have been lucky that I got the time and space to follow my own ideas (as fanciful and quixotic as they seem), so I wasn’t always aware of the ideas set forward by others.

There you go, I didn’t break a single shackle… I merely floated out them, even if they were the ones I clasped on my own wrists. I think the prime factor here is that I have always been an Air-Space personality (I only realized it a few years ago), and these elements are not the easiest to shackle down. That is, in fact, the real issue (if there is one) to overcome… To learn grounding, to develop rootedness and stability, to be steady.

So here I am, an unlikely Rebel of sorts.