What Ships Are You Not Seeing?

It is said that when Columbus arrived on the shores of what would one day be called North America, the indigenous people literally could not see his huge ships because they had never seen anything like them before. They didn’t have a category for “giant sailing vessel,” so their brains were unable to process the information their eyes were giving them. It was as if the ships didn’t exist.

Well, as it turns out, this is not a true story. It’s an assumption gone wrong, based on a written account of someone on one of Captain Cook’s ships, landing somewhere else in the world. That man was surprised that the native people didn’t get more excited about his impressive ship anchoring in their harbor. He remarked that they basically looked up, saw the thing and then went back to what they were doing. This was later interpreted as them actually not being able to see it, and other details were changed as the telephone game of history wore on.

I love the idea of this story, though, because it provides a great metaphor for how we see and interpret the world around us – or fail to. Each personality type has a particular filter through which the world is interpreted. Every person brings their Enneagram filter to every situation, which is why people “see” things so differently. A Two will see a hockey game quite differently from an Eight, for instance. They have different filters, grids through which the same sensory stimuli pass and are interpreted in very different ways.

Another way to say this is that their attention is focused on different things. The Eight may be focused on which players are demonstrating strength and leadership, while the Two’s attention is drawn to the player who’s just been slammed against the rink wall and is being tended to by medics. In that moment, the Eight doesn’t see the injured player; the Two doesn’t see the strong players.

Each Enneagram Type is looking for certain things. A Seven is looking for fun and fascination, for instance, and often fails to see how this narrow focus leaves others feeling forgotten or unheard. A Six is looking for potential dangers at the outdoor party, failing to really take in the beautiful decorations. And so on and so on.

Someone said it really well of her Type recently: “I am not an Eight. I am fixated at Eight.” That is, this woman understands that she is not her personality, and that having a Type Eight personality is not something to identify with. Instead, it’s a point of fixation that prevents her from experiencing the full range of human being-ness. It offers her a narrow view of life through a distorted lens. It limits her ability to see.

As we take the journey of the Enneagram, we have the amazing opportunity to begin to see where we are fixated, to observe those fixations and watch them loosen their grip on us. If you don’t know your Enneagram Type yet, go here and take a test (I recommend the paid version). For those who do know their Type, think about your particular fixations this week and ask yourself, “What ships am I not seeing?”

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