Best Friends and Blind Spots

After my journey through sleep deprivation last week, you’d think I’d be catching up on sleep this week.

But no. I woke up at 2 a.m. this morning with my brain suddenly on. Not pleasantly groggy. More like someone suddenly flipped the lights on. Instant alertness and a little adrenaline.

Normally, I can wait it out and fall back to sleep. But in this case my brain was writing. And my right hand can only flex so many times from wanting to write down a specific paragraph or idea before I break and head to a computer. So here I am at 3 a.m.

And I’m thinking about best friends and blind spots. Mine, in particular.

The Five Love Languages

This is more of a side note than an actual post, but I think it’s a worthy one. I took the Five Love Languages assessment the other day. (Click here if you want to take it for yourself!). If you were around in the 90s, then you’ve heard of this book. It was huge for quite a while. It basically hypothesizes that there are five primary ways that people feel loved and that we’re each different in which ways are most important to us. It uses a simple 30 questions quiz to determine which of the five are most important to you. Theoretically if you know the ways your friends / family / spouse feel loved, you can express your love for them more effectively. And you know us accountants… we’re all about being more effective.

The five love language are:

1. Words of affirmation
2. Acts of service
3. Receiving gifts
4. Quality time
5. Physical touch

Pretty straight-forward, right? Regardless of whether or not it’s the ultimate tool for this kind of assessment, I think it’s a good one. It makes you realize that people really do process love differently… and the things that make me feel loved may not be the things that make you feel loved.

So I took the test and here were my (very accurate) results:

• Physical touch (10): This totally makes sense. I’m from a family of huggers. We have sibling snuggles. We link arms when we walk. We give shoulder massages while we’re in line at the mall. We push one another around (well, these days my brothers just push me around… they’re too big now to push back).
• Quality time (9): I love quality time. In my opinion real friends are the ones who will sit at the counter and talk to you while you’re cooking, follow you around while you’re grocery shopping, or go with you to get your oil changed. You don’t have to entertain them to be worth their time… they’re there because they want to be with you.
• Acts of service (6): At first this one surprised me, but then I realized that this isn’t about doing someones laundry for them. This is about how I feel when my mom brings me coffee because she knows I love it. When my brother drives because he knows I’d rather DJ. When my family doesn’t put a paper napkin at my spot at family meals because they know I hate them (because they’re gross). Those little things that somehow say, “I know you and I love you,” more effectively than words can.
• Words of affirmation (4): Okay, everyone likes to hear how awesome they are.
• Receiving gifts (1): Yeah… I pretty much don’t care about gifts. Unless they’re Apple products. Or coffee.

Now I just need to get everyone I know to take the quiz too… hmm…