James had a habit of rearranging his pack of cigarettes, his lighter, and ashtray as though never satisfied with their position. He moved each, by inches, from one spot on table
or bar top to another. He seemed to do this deliberately.
I think it revealed something about his personality.
I’ve known James for years. He never talked about style, yet style always seemed important to him. The look of things had
to be just so. The way he adjusted his smoking gear reminded me of a film director fussing over the best positioning for even the least significant elements in the next shot.
James directed all the next shots in his life, at least the visual parts. He was less focused on the consequential parts.
I don’t think he was conscious of any of this. We are born with certain imperatives built into our way-of-being. Knowing yourself is difficult.
We imagine ourselves changing throughout our life.
It isn’t quite so. Our bodies change; our personalities do not. I’ve known a few people from childhood through their eighties. They’ve endured much, they’ve accomplished much, their bodies show the wear and tear.
Their personalities are the same as they were the day
they were born.
That’s true for every individual, and for individuals throughout time. Ages come and go. People stay the same.
We imagine people in past times as different from ourselves. They’re not. We mistake changes in culture for changes in humanity. The zeitgiest of earlier times seems strange to us. Surely those people were not like us. We’ve evolved!
Not so.
Individual types of personalities were the same then
as they’ve always been. I don’t know how many types of personalities exist, but it’s finite. Despite each of us being of-a-type we are each, nevertheless, unique. The pattern repeats
but never precisely the same.
I read a lot of old books, books written hundreds, sometimes thousands of years ago. I’ve met myself in those old books, along with James, and all the other people I’ve known
in this life. They dress differently. They speak differently. They’re not really different.
The same personalities recur, time after time.
Strangely, a physical conformation of body and face seems tied to certain personality types. Not precisely, only generally. The doppelgänger is an extreme example of this; someone who looks and acts exactly like yourself.
I once met such a person. It was briefly and at a distance. I couldn’t tell if his personality was the same as mine.
I should have approached him. I didn’t. I’ve regretted that ever since.
It was like looking at myself - It scared me.
None of this is science. It’s my observation and the sense
(perhaps nonsense) I’ve made of my observation.
Verity remains as doubtful now as it’s ever been.
People come and go throughout the ages. Personalities stick around.