Personality Environment Type: The Beach

Hey y'all.  A lot of people seemed to like my forest environment type post, so maybe it's time I actually did another one.  I've got four water-based personality types to go over: the beach, sea-faring, ocean, and deep ocean types.

Let's start with the beach.

Beach people:

- Are generally social.
- Love the feel of exhilaration.
- Are usually easygoing.
- Like bright colors.
- Have a quiet form of escapism.
- Are usually not industrious.
- Tend to think of the present rather than the future.

There's nothing quite so relaxing as the beach.  Unlike the space types, the beach is defined not by what people think it's like, but what it's actually like to be there.  The beach is a social staple, where people gather to witness the beauty of a wilderness and yet be able to relax.  Those that go to the beach do so for three different reasons: to meet people, to relax, and to do something exciting like surf or swim where you can't see what's at your feet.

Those that are the beach type are colorful, creative people.  Like the non-beach types, they too realize that the beach by itself has actually little to offer; it's sandy and hot, and pretty quickly one realizes that any entertainment you're going to get there has to come from yourself rather than the environment.  People bring boards to surf, metal detectors to explore, fishing rods to fish, mats and umbrellas to lay out in the sun, and buckets to play in the sand.  Therefore anyone who is a beach type generally can think of many ways to entertain themselves in this place.

Beachers are pretty social.  There's lots of people to meet and talk to.  If you're fishing off a pier, it's way more pleasant to have someone to chat with.  If you're surfing, it's always fun to have someone to compete with or impress.  While presumably some people like to be alone on the beach, this sort of defeats the purpose, and is only somewhat less odd than going to the movies by yourself.  The only exception is when the beach is in your backyard, and that's only because it's your beach and you don't want beachgoers to litter.

Unlike the forest type, beachgoers don't create fantasy worlds for themselves.  It's true that the beach is a form of escape, as it is the place you go on vacation when you want to get away from work or stress.  However, the beach itself is the beach type fantasy, and beach types feel no need to improve upon what their environment has made.  Given that the beach type is usually less intuitive and introverted than the forest type, they usually do not see any reason to do so.  They don't so much need to think about why things are, but simply choose to enjoy it as it is.  The beachgoer has left all his confusion back at his day job or house.  Beaches aren't for philosophical meditation.

There is also an element of danger to the beach.  There's the heat of the sun, drowning, high cliffs that dare someone to jump off, sharks, and floating jellyfish that have made it to shore but you don't see in time to avoid stepping on it.  In general, none of these things happen very often.  Many thousands of people go to the beach with nothing worse than mild sunburn.  However, the danger of it all does intrigue.  People love to jump off cliffs or practice surfing stunts that could have them planted face first into the water's surface tension.  The thrill of it all excites and draws them in, and unlike the spacer or the forest person, beachgoers many times will be more aware of how dangerous their environment really is.  This doesn't always change their behavior, but they are at least aware.

The main key to remember is the detachment of animal life from the beach type's mindset.  They think often of the waves, rocks, sand, and shells, but it is not an animal or creature within the water that draws them to the beach (that's more of the ocean type).  The beach itself is what draws them.  While a forest person might get obsessed with bears and a space type might spend too much time thinking about aliens, the beach person is thinking more about what he will do at the beach.  He's not going to be cozying up a shark.

One of the things that make the beachgoers easier to understand is the existence of tribal island cultures, who home landmass has a significant proportion of beach.  These cultures have all the characteristics of the beachgoers: love for the waves, an obsession with color, social comfortability, and in particular, non-industriousness.  Simply put, it's too hot to spend all day in a factory or office.  It was a warm culture that invented the siesta, and all cultures nearer to the equator tend to slow down their public side during the hottest hours of the day.  It's simply not practical to work oneself to death.  When it comes to work, these cultures tend to have lots of people do jobs at a casual pace, as opposed to a few people working harder.  This system works just fine in social cultures.

In America, it's sort of a luxury to be a beach type, as I imagine it is in many industrialized countries.  It's a reminder to me that even less wealthy countries have something valuable, that other countries are missing out on.  Granted, you're probably not going to find the next Bill Gates, Shigeru Miyamoto, or General Patton in one of them, but variety is what makes life fun.  There's more than one reason people go to their islands on vacations.

In summary, the beachgoer is a pleasant person who is only inwardly meditative, and then usually with emotions more than words.  He is a happy sort, who throws himself into his fun, and treats the wind and the waves as something with a personality.