Enneagram sp5: everything needed within reach

Every three weeks he cuts his own hair at the bathroom mirror with clippers and three guards, and it comes out even, minus forty minutes in the chair of a talkative barber. What self-preservation guards first in a Five is anything that stands in for a visit or a service from somebody else. The reason: a Five saves attention, and a service gets paid for twice, in money and in forty minutes of a stranger's voice at close range.

One day the supermarket near home pulls out its self-checkout lanes, and now a cashier at the exit asks about the rewards card and whether he needs a bag. Losing a way to get what he needs in silence registers with a Five sooner than any price hike. He leaves the basket by the shelf, finds a store that still has self-checkout on his phone, and from that night on drives there, fifteen minutes farther.

Four days at an out-of-town training, the company doubling everyone up, a week to go until payday. Money he barely has goes to the upgrade for a single room, and nobody knows it: to his coworkers he simply rooms alone. In the evenings he skips the hotel bar and lies in the quiet with a book, and by morning he can field questions till lunch again.

His desk drawer is full of cables: chargers for phones sold long ago, adapters, three extension cords, something for every occasion. Avarice, which needs the reserve never to run dry, turns under self-preservation into keeping things just in case: storing what might be needed costs less than one day taking that need to other people. The drawer is less about cables than about never knocking on a neighbor's door at night.

On the train he takes a window seat, sets a thermos on the tray table, puts on headphones with nothing playing, and says nothing for four hours except thanks to the conductor. The man in the next seat figures he is listening to music and doesn't start a conversation, which was the whole idea: the castle travels with him.

A broken main shuts off the building's water for a day. Under his bed are six jugs of water, and through the door he hears the neighbors in the hall asking one another who has any. He doesn't go out. When someone knocks on his own door, he opens it on the chain, hands over two jugs and closes it without asking how they are managing. He gave the water without counting, and he never once stepped into the hall.