DK: Proust Questionnaire

Posted on by Live & Learn

  1. What is your current state of mind? Unsettled. Restless. (Permanent Status.)
  2. What is your favorite journey? To stay home.
  3. What is your idea of perfect happiness? Solitude. Followed closely by Donuts.
  4. What is your greatest fear? Mortality. 
  5. What is your most marked characteristic? Impatience. Volatility.
  6. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? Introversion. Restlessness.
  7. What is the trait you most deplore in others? Cruelty. Arrogance.
  8. What is your greatest extravagance? Gadgets. (Latest edition. Don’t ask how many.)
  9. What do you consider the most overrated virtue? Optimism.
  10. On what occasion do you lie? It’s rare.
  11. Dislike most about your appearance? I’m at peace with it all (except morning weigh-ins)
  12. Which living person do you most despise? Despise, such a strong word. No one.
  13. Which words or phrases do you most overuse? “Are you prepared to hear this?”
  14. What is your greatest regret? Memories of cruelty.
  15. What or who is the greatest love of your life? Family.
  16. When and where were you happiest? Right now.
  17. Which talent would you most like to have? Pianist like Beethoven. Writer like Steinbeck.
  18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? Less introverted.
  19. If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be? Accept that the Patriarch is right.
  20. What do you consider your greatest achievement? Our two children.
  21. What is your most treasured possession? Gadgets. All of them.
  22. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? The poor, the cold and the hungry in winter. Cruelty to animals.
  23. Where would you like to live? Home. Wherever home is.
  24. What is your favorite occupation? The one I’m in. Love it or leave it.
  25. What is the quality you most like in a man? Humor and humility.
  26. What is the quality you most like in a woman? Grace and kindness.
  27. What do you most value in your friends? Truth.
  28. Who are your favorite writers? Haruki Murakami. Mary Oliver. Steinbeck. Ted Kooser.
  29. Who is your favorite hero of fiction? Bugs Bunny.
  30. What is it that you most dislike? Meals without prodigious amounts of dessert.
  31. Who are your heroes in real life? No heros. I admire the gentle, the kind, the humble.
  32. How would you like to die? I wouldn’t.
  33. If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be? A Golden Retriever. Or Bruce Springsteen.
  34. What is your motto? Never look back.

The Proust Questionnaire has its origins in a parlor game popularized (though not devised) by Marcel Proust, the French essayist and novelist, who believed that, in answering these questions, an individual reveals his or her true nature.  (Source: Vanity Fair)

 

95 thoughts on “DK: Proust Questionnaire”

      1. I’m joking. But I’ll be using this with others going further.
        Restless? I would not have guessed.

        I’ll answer the questionnaire and post after work. Love this. Thanks for posting.

          1. I haven’t posted in almost a year. It’s still there but I changed it to private setting until I figure out what I’m doing. I’ve been itching to go back though.

        2. Sawsan, I just have to say, I never know what I’m doing (I’m referencing your comment further along this string), and I usually blog about THAT. I really can’t wait to read whatever confusion you deign to write!

  3. Interesting — and helpful in the age of textual communication. As I read your responses, I said, “Oh, I never would’ve guessed that!” and, “Me, too.” 🙂

  5. Always enjoy the answers provided to this questionnaire in VF. Some of your responses took me by surprise, and others had me nodding vigorously. Fun to see. May have to try this myself, but unlike Sawsan, don’t think I’m brave enough to do the ‘Full Monty’ reveal… :-O

  13. Why don’t you like being introverted? I love my introversion – it was never accepted by anyone, but now I can be totally myself, I totally enjoy it. And we’re def on the same page on #9. And the first two on #28. We all love Murakami. And #32 – you are a funny man! ;D

    1. It is not a matter of not liking it Bela. I do “like” it – I love my introversion, my solitude and I am at peace there. It is events and situations that I need to participate in that require extraversion that raise the discomfort level. Interesting how aligned we are on somethings, and I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, we follow those blogs with which we identify.

  14. such a funny honesty – all you, absolutely. i am an introvert as well, as much as i love people an the human story. it all made sense, when i read ‘quiet’ as well –

  15. Like some of your other readers, some of your answers took me by surprise and others most definitely not. It’s a shame that you’re not at peace with being an introvert, and I wish you’d find the faith so that you didn’t have to be so concerned about the end. I pray for you, as I do for the other true seekers and troubled souls I’ve ‘met’ on WordPress.
    As for Proust, I read this yesterday:
    ‘A letter in the Guardian claimed that in the 1970s, when books had to be moved from the old library in Worthing to the new one, the library encouraged people to borrow as many books as they wanted from the old library, then return them to the new one.
    “The shelves in the old library were soon empty,” the letter says. Except for the one that held the complete works of Proust.’
    I read it on this blog which I think you might like: https://notesfromtheuk.com/

    1. Thank you Sarah. And thank you for sharing the link to the blog post. I will read it this weekend. As to not being at peace at being an introvert – I am very much at peace with that – but when events and work toss me into situations that is incongruent with solitude and introversion, there is the rub.

  19. Great questions. Honest heartfelt answers! A golden retriever?! Nah, not again! you need to come back as Bruce! This is your true self, hidden under that old belief. Start singing Mr K 😊💃🏼

  20. SO Inspiring DK. courage and honesty are beautiful things.
    Insightful. great post. BRUCE?! 🙂
    You might have… encouraged me to do this quiz as well. Maybe.
    This ‘introvert’ thing…. yes, though we accept, and even embrace it, this trait is not so wonderful when up and center, presenting and performing.
    They, the audience, do not respond well to blushing cheeks, blinking eyes, stammered words and rushing out the doors! LOL

        2. PARABOLA: What effect does [wearing a mask] have on the person wearing it?

          PETER BROOK: I will speak of my experience with the Balinese masks, but I have to go back one step before that. One of the first, knockout exercises that you can do with actors, which is used in lots of theater schools where they use masks, is putting a plain, blank, white mask on someone.

          The moment you take someone’s face away in that way, it’s the most electrifying impression: suddenly to find oneself knowing that that thing one lives with, and which knows is transmitting something all the time, is no longer there. It’s the most extraordinary sense of liberation. It is one of those great exercises that whoever does for the first time counts as a great moment: to suddenly find oneself immediately for a certain time liberated from one’s own subjectivity. And the awakening of a body awareness is immediately there with it, irresistibly; so that if you want to make an actor aware of his body, instead of explaining it to him and saying, “You have a body and you need to be aware of it,” just put a bit of white paper on his face and say, “Now look around.” He can’t fail to be instantly aware of everything he normally forgets, because all the attention has been released from this great magnet on top.

          –from Lie and Glorious Adjective, an interview with English theatre and film director and innovator, Peter Brook on the subject of the transformative power of mask. PARABOLA, Vol. 6., Issue 3, “Mask & Metaphor,” Fall 1981.

          1. Another good find David. I found this so interesting. I’ve reread this a few times. Then, went looking for more info on Mr. Brooks.
            In one article, he said “an actor’s motivation… comes from his capacity to create an incredibly powerful image in himself that he’s convinced by.”

  21. Very interesting…and inspiring reading, David. No ‘bombshells’. Maybe that was an expectation typical of an extrovert 🙂

  22. David love this questionnaire! Loved reading your answers and thought about my own responses to the questions. Thanks for sharing yourself with us!

          1. You know what I was just doing???? I was writing the answers to that questionnaire for a blog post. I’m following…dragging my feet a bit, but following. You’re a good leader, so here I am.

  28. I just CAN’T read and digest it in peace. My hours are packed to breaking point, when in Switzerland it’s visits, enquiries, worries, and a few snatched hours of doing something I like doing (yesterday a longish walk along Lake Zurich and then, by pure chance, ‘saddling’ the only boat passing at the landing where we stopped for a moment, we then took said ship for the 12′ or so minute last leg back to Zurich), more rehearsals, Christmas concerts & celebrations, meals with mothers, prepas…. I NEED MORE TIME – will be back.

    1. awwww. Check these out:

      “https://mymodernmet.com/claudio-piccoli-photos-of-dogs-in-mid-air/?fbclid=IwAR0tfOHFFFnT5pNJOYOkqW2VwsKelkxBtsEnALKeQoITkusxSA8F396l_io”

  30. Late to the game…I was searching Bruce Springsteen, on your blog and this was first in line…I started reading and I thought wow “The Boss” and DK are so much alike! & Bruce and me like some of the same authors! Only when I started to read the comments and checked back at the offering title did I realize that the Proust Questionnaire was being answered by You! Oh, I must be slipping up in my observational skills 🙂 I not feeling well today so that just has to factor in…no doubt…

  31. Thanks for sharing this David. I know I am the “new kid on the block“, but I am very grateful that I discovered your blog. Thank you for sharing your ideas and wisdom, and thank you for letting me get to know you… Even if just a little bit.

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