Our BetterMost Community > The Polling Place
Marcel Proust Questionnaire
moremojo:
1. What is your most marked characteristic? Approaching life from a thoughtful and reasoned angle.
2. What is the quality you most like in a man? Nurturing in strength.
3. What is the quality you most like in a woman? An earthy charm.
4. What do you most value in your friends? Steadfastness in good times and bad.
5. What is your principal defect? Giving into fear too easily.
6. What is your favourite occupation? Reading.
7. What is your dream of happiness? Being at peace with myself, and sharing my life with someone who cherishes me in every way.
8. What, to your mind, would be the greatest of misfortunes? To lose my mental faculties.
9. What would you like to be? The most loving person I could be.
10. In what country would you like to live? One where the life of the mind is respected and encouraged.
11. What is your favourite colour? Blue.
12. What is your favourite flower? Wisteria.
13. What is your favourite bird? The dove.
14. Who are your favourite prose writers? Emily Bronte, Voltaire, Joseph Conrad.
15. Who are your favourite poets? Sappho, Horace, Friedrich Holderlin.
16. Who is your favourite hero of fiction? Don Quixote.
17. Who are your favourite heroines of fiction? Titania, the Wife of Bath, Lysistrata.
18. Who are your favourite composers? Beethoven, Debussy, Tchaikovsky.
19. Who are your favourite painters? Jacques-Louis David, Ingres, Gustav Klimt.
20. Who are your heroes in real life? All those who persevere while doing the least harm to their brethren.
21. Who are your favourite heroines of history? Sojourner Truth, Emma Goldman, Florence Nightingale.
22. What are your favourite names? Samuel, Benjamin, Nicholas.
23. What is it that you most dislike? Cruelty.
24. What historical character do you most despise? Hitler.
25. What event in military history do you most admire? Any moment when a truce was declared.
26. What reform do you most admire? The abolition of slavery.
27. What natural gift would you most like to possess? An easy-going yet seductive charm.
28. How would you like to die? With full awareness that I am dying.
29. What is your present state of mind? Calm, but mindful that time is running out.
30. To what faults do you feel most indulgent? Laziness, both physical and mental.
31. What is your motto? "Nothing compares, I think, when thinking right, to a good friend."
Kerry:
--- Quote from: ednbarby on March 12, 2007, 01:00:38 pm ---I have one friend in particular - I love her to pieces, but she drives me crazy - for whom the grass is *always* greener on the other side. She is never, ever satisfied. With anything.
--- End quote ---
Ah, yes, I am very familiar with this mind-set. I consider myself to be most fortunate in that I am self-resourceful and sublimely content with my lot in life. Some might respond that this is easy for me to say, because I don’t lack for much. And certainly, this is true. My life is not one of hardship and privation. Nor, however, is it a life of overt opulence. I own my apartment, have a car, a job, food in the refrigerator, books to read and canvases to paint, friends on the other end of the phone. What more could one want? (a boyfriend who lives closer than several hundred miles away would be nice, but that’s another story!)
The idea of spending a wet week at home, alone, with my head buried in a novel, is my definition of bliss! Even better if the phone doesn’t ring during that week. I have a very dear friend (of some 30+ years) who absolutely freaks out about my lifestyle. He is a rampaging extrovert who is absolutely compelled to “enjoy,” manically, every minute of every day. He tut-tuts at me often! Why is it that extroverts can never appreciate that introverts are happy being introverts; that trying to force them to be extroverts is what stresses them most? Alas, my extrovert friend is rarely a happy little camper! He thinks he is, but he’s not! This is because he is always searching for happiness, which is constantly just out of his reach. Like me, he has a comfortable lifestyle, with all the “necessities” and gadgets he could ever need. Yet, he is still forever manically searching for more, more, more. I tell him that true happiness comes from within. A concept he has trouble grasping.
Another dear friend of many years is one of those people who must always keep up with the Joneses. Whether it be a new house, expensive landscaping, water feature in the garden, automatic garage doors, restaurants, live shows, vacations, cars, the latest interior design for his home – he MUST have it. The main reason for this endless pursuit of “objects” is to one-up everyone else. It absolutely destroys him when someone else, particularly a friend, has something bigger or better or newer than him. In my personal opinion, that is a very sad state of affairs. As is he. He is basically a very sad, unfulfilled person. He has a partner, who is just as bad at eternally trying to keep up with the Joneses as he is!
Truth of the matter is, I’ve known both these guys for many, many years. Our friendship has stood the test of time. And I must say that I am sure they think I am just as weird as I think they are (maybe “weird” is too harsh a word; perhaps “challenged” would be better). The former person because I am content with my own company and the latter because I have no interest whatsoever in other people’s possessions.
My parents taught me that, “The best things in life are free.” Maybe I should have used this quote as my motto in the questionnaire.
ednbarby:
--- Quote from: David on March 12, 2007, 05:18:47 pm ---And I also think some people are not happy unless there is a crisis in their life. My sister is like that. If everything is going well for her, she'll find a crisis; even make one up if she has to. I've seen a lot of people do this. They aren't happy unless they're miserable.
It sounds like you and I are very much alike Barb! :D
--- End quote ---
OH.MY.GOD. Did you ever hit the nail on the head, there. I call such people "Professional Victims." If they do not have a crisis in their lives, they create one.
Me, I grew up where I constantly felt like the sky was falling. And I hated it. So in my adult life I went the other way - I avoid/avert crises at all costs. So as you can imagine, this particular type of person drives me *NUTS.* And yet they seem to seek me out. I must be the yin to their yang. They always seem to call me when their lives are at, in their minds, their most frenetic. I like to hope they'll remember me well - that they'll think I'm the one who gave them enough perspective to carry on. But I think the reality is they seek me out at that time because I'm the only one who'll put up with it
And David, I must tell you - you saying that you think you and I are very much alike is the best compliment I've gotten in a long time.
ednbarby:
--- Quote from: Kerry on March 12, 2007, 06:59:52 pm ---The idea of spending a wet week at home, alone, with my head buried in a novel, is my definition of bliss! Even better if the phone doesn’t ring during that week. I have a very dear friend (of some 30+ years) who absolutely freaks out about my lifestyle. He is a rampaging extrovert who is absolutely compelled to “enjoy,” manically, every minute of every day. He tut-tuts at me often! Why is it that extroverts can never appreciate that introverts are happy being introverts; that trying to force them to be extroverts is what stresses them most? Alas, my extrovert friend is rarely a happy little camper! He thinks he is, but he’s not! This is because he is always searching for happiness, which is constantly just out of his reach. Like me, he has a comfortable lifestyle, with all the “necessities” and gadgets he could ever need. Yet, he is still forever manically searching for more, more, more. I tell him that true happiness comes from within. A concept he has trouble grasping.
--- End quote ---
Mine, too, Kerry.
One of my brothers is very much like this friend of yours. I call this the "Can't-Be-Alone" type. When this brother finds himself utterly alone, he picks up the phone, calls someone - anyone - and paces. I can hear him pacing over the airwaves.
I once told him I was nervous about an upcoming job interview. He said, "Why? It's just talking to another person..." I said, "Exactly. A person I don't know." He said, "Well, that's just silly." I said, "Really? Tell me - how do you feel when you find yourself completely alone with no one to talk to, no one at home when you call them on the telephone, nowhere to go to find someone to talk to...?" He looked at me with this stricken, panicked look in his eyes. I said, "That's how I feel whenever I meet a new person for the first time." He just goes, "Oh."
delalluvia:
--- Quote ---I have one friend in particular - I love her to pieces, but she drives me crazy - for whom the grass is *always* greener on the other side. She is never, ever satisfied. With anything.
--- End quote ---
I had friends like this, too.
I got rid of them.
Because after a while, they were just wasting my time. Like you, I suggested they might be happier finding happiness inside themselves, rather than looking outside for it. They listened to me, nodded, agreed with the wisdom, how much better their lives would be if they did that - and went right back to doing exactly what they'd been doing, complaining about the same issues with the same situations, day in and day out, year after year while I listened, patiently offering the same advice until I sounded like a stuck record and realized I was just pissing into the wind. They didn't want to improve their lives.
That was their perogative. Mine was not to have to sit there and listen to them.
It's worse when it's a relative. You can't ever get rid of them. My mother listens patiently to my idiot aunt, gives her the same advice to the same problems as she's been doling out for decades. And it just goes in one ear and out the other. :P
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