Real ideal

Choose to opt out of this one. I won't feel bad. I'm going to my thinky-feely place. You've been duly warned.

I have often talked with friends about the idea that there are 'doers' and 'thinkers' in this world. We need both. Without the doers, we'd still be in caves (but would we care?). Without the thinkers, we'd still be in caves (we'd never have noticed that we were there in the first place). It's always an interesting conversation.

I guess what we're really saying with this whole doers/thinkers thing is that, when it comes to how we look at life, most of us fall somewhere on a spectrum that goes from idealism to realism. Some of us (like me) are extreme idealists. Others of us (like my husband) are extreme realists. And of course, there are people who sit at every point in between.

The more balanced people can leave now. You will get nothing out of this. For we extremists, though, maybe this is a valuable point (or maybe not): I think we need each other.

Extreme realists are always asking about the 'what?' of things. Details, details, details. They seem, at first glance, to be highly practical. They can be geniuses. Or they can be Rainman (who was a genius too, after all). The point is, if left to their own devices, they will spin their tires for hours over a small knocking in the engine. Or a bad conversation they had with someone. Or what colour they should paint the hinges on the front door. How to identify an extreme realist: tell them they're an extreme realist. They will argue with you for hours about the minute exceptions that disqualify them from that category.

Extreme idealists, on the other hand, are always asking 'why?' Talk, talk, talk. They are often leaders, executives, and other people who get made fun of behind their backs and whose insight is not valued until they are gone and another much, much worse idealist replaces them. They are all about the pie-in-the-sky, big picture, birds-eye-view. While E.Rs. (extreme realists) will dismiss any idea for which a single seemingly minute detail is wrong, E.Is (extreme idealists) will foresake details if they believe the idea has intrinsic value. Idealists really irritate people at times--they're especially irksome to extreme realists--because it seems to take them forever to get to the point. Not a few extreme idealists have carried the label of 'windbag' at one time in their lives. How to identify an extreme idealist: tell them they're an extreme idealist. They will ask you to explore why you need to categorize people this way, or why you chose the categories you did, or why the sky is blue.

E.Is may understand the complete history of computing but not know how to send an e-mail. E.Rs will cause the downfall of the human race by blindly creating artificial intelligence, which will subsequently dominate and destroy us.

Which is exactly why we E.Rs and E.Is need each other so much.

When it comes to ideas, I believe there is some kind of 'fulcrum' point at which an optimum amount of insight balances an optimum amount of detail. I also think this is true of people, or more specifically, of personalities. There's an optimum point where your actions and your self-awareness come into balance. I like to think of that point as 'happiness' or maybe 'self-fulfillment.'

I'm sure a bunch of much more insightful people than me--actual psychologists, for example--have already got a bunch of well-developed theories around this. But for me, it's enough to know that there's a reason why my husband (I love you, honey) and I seem to argue in totally different languages sometimes--and that that difference actually makes us complementary to each other.

So hopefully all you E.Rs out there are satisfied that I've made some kind of a reality-based point. And for all you E.Is: thanks for taking the time to read this.