Thinker Unplugged

You might think you know yourself.

Adorable.

For years, every personality assessment I took returned the same verdict: INTJ. The Architect. The Mastermind. The one who watches from the shadows, who finds human interaction rather tiresome, who prefers the elegant company of his own thoughts to the tedious noise of others.

I accepted this. I even cultivated it, if I’m honest. There’s a certain cachet to being the solitary strategist, wouldn’t you say? The chess player who sees twelve moves ahead whilst everyone else is still fumbling with their pawns. Very flattering.

You might very well think I enjoyed the classification. I couldn’t possibly comment. But here’s the difficulty with flattering lies: they’re still lies. And lies, however comfortable, have a habit of eventually presenting their invoice.

I am, it transpires, autistic.

Oh, I hear you say. How fashionable. Everyone’s autistic now, aren’t they?

Do be quiet.

This is not a trendy self-diagnosis plucked from social media. This is the result of proper assessment by people with letters after their names and a rather expensive hourly rate. And it has reframed everything I thought I understood about myself with the brutal efficiency of a hostile takeover.

What I believed was introversion? Masking.

What I interpreted as preferring solitude? Recovery. From the exhausting, unrelenting work of pretending to be normal. Of running complex social calculations that other people apparently perform automatically, the way one breathes or blinks. I have been operating, it seems, with a rather significant piece of cognitive software running constantly in the background. Taking up resources. Generating heat.

No wonder I was tired.

Remove that variable, recalculate, and what emerges?

An ENTJ.

The Commander. The one who doesn’t merely observe the room but organises it. Who finds energy in engagement. Who thinks aloud, leads from the front, and regards inefficiency as a personal affront.

I wasn’t retreating because I preferred solitude.

I was retreating because pretending was exhausting.

There is a difference. A rather significant one, as it happens.

You see, the personality assessments ask all the wrong questions. They’re frightfully democratic that way. They ask whether you find parties draining. They don’t ask why. They ask whether you prefer small groups. They don’t enquire whether this is genuine preference or mere survival strategy.

They measure the behaviour.

They haven’t the faintest idea what machinery produces it.

It’s rather like judging a man’s character by observing that he always carries an umbrella. Cautious, you might conclude. Risk-averse. Pessimistic, perhaps. When in fact he simply lives in Manchester.

Context, you see. Context is everything.

And I have been operating without a rather crucial piece of context for… well. Let us say “some years” and leave it at that. A gentleman doesn’t dwell on the precise magnitude of his errors.

The implications are uncomfortable. Every invitation I declined. Every gathering I avoided. Every time I explained myself with a knowing smile and the words “I’m an introvert, you understand.” Was I honouring my nature or merely hiding? Protecting myself or limiting myself?

Both. Neither. Something in between that I’m still learning to name.

Here is what I find most irritating: I was right there. The information was available. The patterns were visible. And I, who pride myself on seeing what others miss, on reading the board whilst everyone else reads only the pieces … I missed it entirely.

One doesn’t like to be outmanoeuvred. Particularly by oneself.

But there is, I suppose, a certain dark comedy in it. The master strategist, undone by his own blind spot. The man who sees twelve moves ahead, unable to see the rather obvious thing directly in front of his face.

Hubris, the Greeks would call it.

I call it a bloody nuisance.

Still. Here we are. The tower I built as a shelter? I understand now what I was sheltering from. And that understanding changes things. One cannot unsee what one has seen. One cannot unknow what one has learned.

I find, somewhat to my surprise, that I rather prefer to come outside.

You might very well think this is a small revelation. A mere reshuffling of letters. A footnote in the autobiography.

I couldn’t possibly comment.

But I will say this: there is no humiliation quite so exquisite as discovering that the story you told about yourself, the story you believed, the story you dined out on for decades … was missing its most important chapter.

The chapter was there all along, of course.

I simply hadn’t the wit to read it.

Mea culpa.

Now. Shall we proceed?