Proust No. Eight

1 word or short phrase answers for the rest of the questions.

Your favorite virtue?

Humanitas

Your favorite qualities in a man?

Logic

Your favorite qualities in a woman

Empathy

What you appreciate the most in your friends?

Follow through

Your main fault?

Disinterest in money

Your favorite occupation?

Mixer

Your idea of misery?

Paperweight

If not yourself, who should you be?

My better self

Where would you like to live?

In the country.

Your favorite prose authors?

http://www.jennyblovesyou.com/

Your favorite poets?

http://impassionedversifier.blogspot.com/

Your favorite heroes in fiction?

Dexter

Your favorite heroines in fiction?

1 of my own creation.

Your favorite painters and composers?

Painter: Klemmer

Composer: http://www.guggenheimgrotto.com/

Your heroes in real life?

My friends

Your heroines in real life?

Mom

Your heroines in World history?

Any woman that lives under sharia law.

Your favorite food and drink?

Oklahoma Joe’s and Pepsi

Your favorite names?

Evie

What I hate the most?

Doubt

World history characters I hate the most?

Any tyrant

The reform I admire the most?

Health Care

The natural talent I’d like to be gifted with?

I’d be satisfied with being as good at basketball as I used to be.

How I wish to die?

Fearless

Your favorite motto?

Matthew 6:21

That concludes my look back at 2010.  We may have to do this again next December.

6 thoughts on “Proust No. Eight”

  1. I find it more remarkable to encounter logic in a woman and empathy in a man. I mean this only as an honest sociological observation. Every person could stand to have a healthy mix of these qualities, and I find it culturally unfortunate that they seem to manifest unequally via gender roles. A warrior without a heart has the passion of a murderer.

  2. Angie,

    Yes. Mixing people.

    Eric,

    I would agree with you, but I find it so much more frustrating to deal with a man who isn’t logical than a woman. A woman who doesn’t have a heart is basically too much like a man and I don’t want the qualities of a man in a woman.

    Perhaps not logical on my part, but as you may or may not remember, in 2009 I found my greatest fault to be that I was too emotional.

  3. People are made out of a thousand pendulums. Some swing too far and others swing opposite those of other people. Your life had too much emotional swing. My life has had too much logical swing. That pendulum of mine swings violently and knocks everything out of sync; too much of my energy has gone into it.

    The world has an overabundance of too-clever men without an unselfish or unprimal concern to their name. And little frustrates and saddens me more than to see the energy and intelligence of women squandered. We need sensible women with open eyes by our side, and they need men with open hearts.

    I understand your revulsion, if I may call it that, at encountering a cold woman. I have a similar revulsion, but it swings from a direction at a right angle to yours. For me, people who can’t think logically are like perpetual children, and it’s difficult not to feel an odd mixture of fear for their safety and abhorrence.

    However, our childhood is still in us, and it’s important to visit with our childhood self so we may measure our growth and understand, empathetically, people that haven’t grown. And we should also visit childhood for the simple joy of it.

    I know he has a goofy voice, but listen to Carl Sagan sometime if you want to hear logic and emotion in balance, which is a healthy state for men and women alike.

  4. Agreed Eric and your response is a reminder to me that I don’t know why we don’t hang out more.

    I do want to clarify one point.

    I don’t mean “empathy” in women to mean emotional. I don’t find it attractive in women when they are overly emotional.

    It is a warm heart in women that I find the most attractive.

    I agree that there needs to be a balance for both men and women, but I would never want women and men to be the same.

    I will always love this line by the way:

    “Your life had too much emotional swing. My life has had too much logical swing.”

  5. Thank you. I’m not sure why we don’t hang out either. I’m not comfortable around groups of people, but I like small company. “Empathy” is a complex word. Perhaps it’s the type of word you can spend your whole life trying to define.

    I don’t think women and men can be the same, and I think there’s a place for gender roles, but I haven’t thought very thoroughly about it. Being a mother strikes me as a more complicated affair than being a father, especially in this relatively new world where women are starting to walk their own paths.

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