Peace, my child; Let it be.

Adaptability.  If you are at all familiar with the Clifton StrengthsFinder system, then you may know that Adaptability is one of the themes that Gallup includes under its “Relationship Building” category.  If you are at all familiar with me, you will probably be surprised to learn that when I took the Strengths Assessment in the fall of 2017, Adaptability was ranked within my top five themes from a list of 34.  Had I guessed, I would never have thought that I would be called adaptable, in any setting, for any reason.  

One of my mom’s favorite things to tease me about is my attachment to lists and schedules.  If you say that we’re eating dinner at a certain time, I’ll expect to be eating dinner at that time.  Monday is my favorite day of the week, because it’s the day that everything starts over, and I have a schedule to follow again.  I prize routine.  I like my life boring.  Though I love the sun (lol standsforthesun.blogspot.com), I get annoyed if I wake up to rain, and then the weather clears later in the day.  

An overarching philosophy that I try to maintain is that today is beautiful.  I like to remind myself that joy comes with every moment, no matter how happy or unhappy that moment may seem.  I possess Positivity, I would think, in far greater measures than I do Adaptability.  When I see someone else struggling, it is my first instinct to help them.  Regardless of how much I may need my own time, or I may be struggling myself, I feel their pain, and I want to help ease it if I can.  I would therefore argue that Empathy is a larger part of me than Adaptability.  I am Responsible, Inclusive, and a Learner, I would think, before I am interested in being flexible to breaks in routine or changes in plans.

None of this seems to indicate an adaptable person.  And yet, here we are.

Why am I writing about this?  Why am I even thinking about a personality test that I took over a year ago, which probably has little to do with who I am?  Don’t I know myself well enough to trust what I have experienced as the person I am, rather than some test I took online?  No, not really, but that’s honestly a different issue.

I’m focused on this idea of myself as an adaptable person because it is, yet again, the end of an academic session and the beginning of a new one.  For those not in the know (i.e. not my mom), I have yet to move in or out of a dorm without crying.  The end of the school year brings with it remarkable existential dread.  Even in college, when I sometimes don’t know the name of the person sitting next to me, I am always overcome with melancholy at the end of a term, because I know that I won’t be seeing the same groups of people again.  I might never have the same professors again.  Though relatively inconsequential, these thoughts always bothers me.  

Over the winter, I took Geology.  There was a 3 credit lecture course, and a 1 credit lab.  This effectively closed out the “Arts and Sciences Breadth” section of my degree audit.  Shouldn’t I be excited?  I should be excited.  I’m that much closer to graduating, and having a career, and living the rest of my life.  I can now focus exclusively on the major and minors that I’ve chosen for myself.  Rather than being excited, I am instead sad that I won’t be taking any more random classes about rocks (which is not a dig, Geology was really cool).  

I feel as though an adaptable person would probably just buy a new notebook and move on.  Isn’t that what you would imagine from someone that a pretty well-respected personality inventory called Adaptable?  Me too!  

Why am I exposing myself this way?  Why am I spilling this tea?  Letting anyone in on this neurosis is embarrassing, so why am I bothering?

It’s because I think I might be wrong about myself (and Gallup might be right!!), at least a little bit.  

Change is inevitable; I know this.  Though I like routines and stability and balance, there have been many times when all of that has turned upside down.  People, places, and things have come and gone.  I’m in my twenty first year of life, my third year of college, and I can identify not only plenty of external things that have changed, but also dozens of people I used to be.  

I do not like the anticipation of something new.  I do not enjoy knowing that some things I love eventually stop being a part of my life.  But I like who I am (kind of a lot, if I do say so myself), and I know that she is the result of years and years of changes and growing pains and endings and beginnings.  So much has changed over the course of my time here on Earth — subtly, slowly, or all at once — and I have never given up on the belief that life is a beautiful, joyful thing.  I don’t mean to claim undue wisdom, but I am proud of myself for holding this faith in myself through the most difficult moments and coming out of them stronger and better than before.  

And there it is: Adaptability.  Perhaps not adhering to the dictionary definition, and perhaps not quite displaying the qualities that Clifton StrengthsFinder identifies as parts of Adaptability, but present nonetheless.  Sometimes, I guess, being adaptable does not necessarily mean greeting change with open arms and excitement.  It seems to me that sometimes the understanding that life goes magnificently on in spite of difficult and uncomfortable moments is enough to convince an apparently advanced personality inventory that Adaptability is one of your dominant strengths.

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