After complaining a few days ago that the pace of Alan Alda's audio book Never Have Your Dog Stuffed was a bit too fast, I listened to the rest of it yesterday, first while taking a bath and then while tidying up the house. At times the pace was still a bit uncomfortable, but I discovered belatedly that this version was abridged, and that may have been part of the problem. I wasn't listening to Alda's unaltered rhythm of speaking; I was listening to some abridger's version.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the audio book on the whole and found out the many ways in which Alan Alda is not actually Hawkeye Pierce, which is a good thing to have learned.

Another thing leapt out at me while I listened, though, and that is Alda's regular pattern of realizing things. "I realized... I realized... I realized..."  A pattern that appears in Practically Shameless as well, and in many of my essays.

As I generally do, I was trying to figure out the whole time I was listening what Enneagram type Alda is. I began thinking he was the same type as me -- a Six -- mostly for two characteristics: his habit of making everything humorous, which is a common Six strategy because it reduces anxiety, and because his energy is so "edgy," a word often applied to Sixes. (Think Robin Williams.) "Antsy" would be another word for it, and if you're as familiar with old M*A*S*H episodes as I am, I'm pretty sure you'll agree.

As I listened, however, I heard some characteristics of other types, mostly One and Eight, so I kept an open mind about it, but came back to my original conclusion about 3/4 way through the book. That's about the time when the "realized" pattern struck me as well -- and of course now, as I talk about it, I'm exhibiting that very pattern -- "I realized that Alan Alda says 'I realized' a lot!" 

The childhood of a Six is sometimes described as a lack of guidance and support, and that certainly describes both our backgrounds. What's striking me this morning -- okay, I'll say it -- what I'm realizing this morning -- is that the series of realizations makes sense for a person who grew up figuring things out for themselves, and gradually finding trusted sources of guidance, because guidance was missing in childhood.

For me, as I described in Practically Shameless, the sources became Shadow Work, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell and others, and for Alda the sources were different, but the pattern is remarkably similar.