(written in 2002)
Do you believe that you can make your weak points your strong points? I do believe that our defects can be changed into good points. It may take considerable time, but I think we can surely transform our weaknesses into strengths. As time goes on, I experience this mystery of transformation more deeply, and that experience brings about a touching turning point in my life. Our ups and downs are rather stimulators encouraging us to challenge reality with trust, courage, and vision. It's an amazing beauty to see the old selves being renewed little by little. What a joy it is to recognize such inner beauty in every moment of our lives!
When I talk about weakness and strength, I can't but remember my interest in singing. Do you enjoy singing? I like to sing. When the choir was selected in my community, I wanted to be chosen, but the choir mistress discerned my voice was not suitable for the choir. However, just after a while, my friend's sister recommended I join in the alto part. So, in the end, I could join the choir. Nobody thought I would do well in the choir.
Nevertheless, I tried to listen carefully to the organ's alto sound and follow the tune as far as I could. At Mass or at prayer meetings, the alto was the part I enjoyed singing. Sometimes, it was only I who sang this low tone. I just did it because I liked it and felt more comfortable with an alto pitch. In fact, I couldn't do otherwise because my voice easily gets husky when I follow high tones. Like this, singing the alto part was begun because of my incapability to adjust myself to a higher tone. My weakness in voice has found another way to enjoy its weak nature by means of the alto part, which is something like a breakthrough. So, I tried to practice it whenever possible.
Almost 10 years passed by and a very interesting thing happened to me recently. A specially arranged team for Christmas carols invited me to join in recording a disc. It was another little miracle for me because I had never expected it before. Because of this generous invitation, I had an opportunity to practice all day long for 2 weeks before recording our chants.
Of course, the process of this practice demanded much time, energy, zeal, endurance, and understanding as well. While practicing, I even wondered if my choice was right. Especially when the composer continued arranging the music even to the last day of recording, I almost wanted to cry because of anger at such immediate changes. In the beginning, seven of us practiced four parts--soprano, alto, tenor, and base. However, the base part had to consider the arranged music and join in the alto part because of its ineffectiveness with the music. A sister who sang the base part practiced so hard but she ended up having to learn the alto part.
With all these rises and falls, I realized recording is never easy. Happily, recording bit by bit in the spirit of the same goal to celebrate and share the joy of Christmas with others. The most valuable lesson I learned is the importance and beauty of harmony and adjustment. Listening to the songs we sang all together, I cannot help saying that it is really beautiful and even holy to hear.
Shortcomings can be turned out to be strong points as far as we are fully open to the possibility. Some people easily give up a chance or some potential probably because of a narrow-minded and negative point of view. There is always another way to look for and go. If one way is blocked, don't simply abandon it but try to find a detour. Various different ways are always awaiting us, and that makes our lives more beautiful and mysterious. Understanding the enneagram leads us to experience powerful spiritual conversion by means of the transformation of consciousness. A spiritual revolution can happen when we understand and accept ourselves as we are. The Enneagram helps us to see, understand, and accept both our weaknesses and our inner strengths.
According to the enneagram, our weaknesses seem to come from a central compulsion or preoccupation by our way of paying attention and searching for something or avoiding certain things in life. However, this weakness can be transformed into a unique personality that can contribute to public goodness and mutual cooperation.
The nine types of the enneagram show this as follows: being a moral or ethical perfectionist and critical reformer (type one), a quintessential helper always caring for other people's needs while ignoring one's own needs (type two), a success-oriented workaholic with high-energy and super-achiever (type three), a tragic romantic artistic person with a special and authentic sense (type four), a detached and observant and intellectual person (type five), a fearful and worrying person (type six), a fun-loving person with high energy, a wide range of interests and vitality (type seven), a person with power, justice, and pressure (type eight), and a passive-aggressive peace-seeker wanting no conflict (type nine).
All these nine characteristics have both weaknesses and strengths; out of the duality of being, these unique natures can provide certain creative energies, motives, and world views. In this way, we can make use of our dual images of personality. Weakness is a bridge to another world with sympathy, cooperation, and mutual independence. It can be surely transformed into positive good points and produce a miracle.
The Korea Times/ Thoughts of The Times/ Nov. 13, 2002
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