The Proust Questionnaire -- In Process

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. Here is the basic Proust Questionnaire.

__1.__What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Who claims perfect happiness?  If there is any case in which perfection is the enemy of good, this is it.  If you reach perfect happiness, then what?  I think it far more valuable to achieve a happy disposition and a happy philosophy.  Equipped that way, when you have a set back, you can respond emotionally and rationally within the bounds of your disposition and your world view.  Happiness is a choice you make.

__2.__What is your greatest fear?  

Physically, I avoid claustrophobic confinement.  Mentally, I shun enslavement of any kind.  And spiritually, I do not turn toward closed ends.

__3.__What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?  

The tendency to respond with fight or flight, and to let that hold you back from high purpose.  I hope that I am an analytical, reasonable man.  But I fear the knee jerk, subliminal, primordial reaction that preempts critical thinking, forestalls principled analysis.

__4.__What is the trait you most deplore in others?

I do not empathize with those who cannot be generous to everyone.  It is something that everyone can aspire to without great sacrifice, therefore it is mean-spirited, small, and frightened to be otherwise.

__5.__Which living person do you most admire?

I don't know how to make a distinction among the living and those who illuminate today from the past.  Why should I have to make a distinction.  If I must name a person, he would be Mark Twain, a person of great wit, deep seriousness, and well-informed hope.  The grandest  aspect of human life is that, though few, there are always men and women of Twain's stripe.

__6.__What is your greatest extravagance?

I live as though I have unlimited time to spend.  I refuse to accept that there is not immortality, at least until I have had the alternative proven in my personal case.  There are many whom I do not wish to outlive, but since that is not my call, I do not dwell on it.  In either event, it will be among life's many things.

__7.__What is your current state of mind?

My current state of mind is being content with the state my mind finds itself in.  I am patient enough to wait for the world to play onward for awhile.  Every day delivers a thousand new delights.

__8.__What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

Patriotism, and similar abstractions, are without substantial outcome.  It is a handle by which one may be manipulated.  It  is not a commodity of which one can share in happiness with others.

__9.__On what occasion do you lie?

Whenever I have the luxury of knowing in advance that it would be kind, then I may tell a lie.  The problem is that one seldom can know anything in advance.  Lots of practice, however, makes one less blind to likelihoods.

__10.__What do you most dislike about your appearance?

I haven't really thought about it much.  I believe that I have, practically, very little control over how others see me.  If anything, I am a bit too unthinking in this regard.  Other people do have legitimate reasons for wanting people to show a close match between their appearance and their affect.  But I am unsure whether my leaning toward naturalness is as welcomed by the average person as it is by me.

__11.__Which living person do you most despise?

Again, I don't claim even to know who is living or has died. I have a kind of a folk grasp of whom is present and of whom may have departed.  There are many villains of today and of the past, the worst being the warmongers.  I do not speak here of the soldiers.  My disdain is for those manipulators who think anyone's death ever serves the cause of peace.

__12.__What is the quality you most like in a man?

Openness is the quality I most like in a person, regardless of gender.  It is a quality most often dampened by fear and lack of confidence.

__13.__What is the quality you most like in a woman?

See above.  I have no reason, reasonable or otherwise, to suppose that I would like one aspect of women that I wouldn't find in a man.  In fact, I reject the idea that an entire gender would have a single, unique quality.  If I see the uniqueness of an individual, it is never in gender.

__14.__Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

These are too numerous to mention, but "too numerous to mention" would be a good example.  I do not throw away cliche casually, only those that have lost their power to communicate more adequately than a newly formed phrase.

__15.__What or who is the greatest love of your life?

My wife of 50 years and our generations are the people.  The thing is language.

__16.__When and where were you happiest?

I have been happiest in the period between April 29, 1943 and today.  I have found a piece of everywhere I have been that makes me happier.

__17.__Which talent would you most like to have?

I would love to compose music that sounded as though it were written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.  But wouldn't that be selfish of me?   Although we could always use more of the genuine Mozart, an ersatz Mozart would be a drug on the market.  I suppose that the impostor complex would take me down.

__18.__If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

I would work harder at being a better writer.  But wait!  I should work harder at being a better friend to my wife.  The second plan, however, will scotch the first plan.  But the first plan will destroy both the second plan and itself.

 ... to be continued ...

__19.__What do you consider your greatest achievement?

__20.__If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?

__21.__Where would you most like to live?

__22.__What is your most treasured possession?

__23.__What do you regard as the lowest depth of m
isery?

__24.__What is your favorite occupation?

__25.__What is your most marked characteristic?

__26.__What do you most value in your friends?

__27.__Who are your favorite writers?

__28.__Who is your hero of fiction?

__29.__Which historical figure do you most identify with?

__30.__Who are your heroes in real life?

__31.__What are your favorite names?

__32.__What is it that you most dislike?

__33.__What is your greatest regret?

__34.__How would you like to die?

__35.__What is your motto?