The Proust Questionnaire

The Proust Questionnaire is a questionnaire about one's personality. Its name and modern popularity as a form of interview is owed to the responses given by the French writer Marcel Proust.  Proust answered the questionnaire several times in his life, always with enthusiasm.


Vanity Fair magazine has an interactive version of this questionnaire and I decided to take it, to compare my answers to various luminaries.  Here goes my answers:

1.  What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Sitting on the beach, with my 3 favorite boys, sipping a tall glass of iced coffee.



2.  What is your greatest fear?
Losing my boys, can't imagine my life without them.


3.  Which historical figure do you most identify with?
None really.


4.  Which living figure do you admire most?
My mom.


5.  What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Laziness and my fear of confrontations.


6.  What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Arrogance and sense of entitlement.  Feeling that you know EVERYTHING, when in fact you know nothing.  And feeling that you deserve and are entitled to other people's achievements and happiness, when you did nothing to earn it.


7.  What is your greatest extravagance?
Maybe having my hair straightened once a year.  The time, the effort, the cost, all for vanity!


8.  On what occasion do you lie?
When I know that telling the truth would hurt someone.  And sometimes I lie by omission.


9.  What do you dislike most about your appearance?
I am most conscious about my bulging tummy with its flab and ugly stretch marks.


10.  When and where were you happiest?
I thought I was happiest on my wedding day.  But now, I am happy when I am at home with my family.


11. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I probably wished I was in a different job.


12.  If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?
I would probably hope that we all lived in the same country, instead of being so far apart.


13.  What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Giving birth to my two boys.  I hope I can raise them to be good and honorable gentlemen.  That will be an even greater achievement.


14.  If you died and came back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
I hope it won't happen!  I don't want to come back as an inanimate object!


15.  What is your most treasured possession?
My collection of family photos, the probably my wedding and engagement rings.


16.  What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Regret.  Dying and not being able to do what you are suppose to do.


17. Who are you heroes in real life?
My parents and grandparents.  For their wisdom.


18.  What is it that you most dislike?
Crawling, slimy, slippery creatures! Eyyewww!


19.  How would you like to die?
Peacefully, in my sleep.  Nothing violent and bloody please.


20.  What is your motto?
"So in all that you do, in all of your life, I wish you the strength and the grace to make the choices which will allow you and your neighbor to become the best of whoever you are."