Take Back Your Life!

Quote of the day: “We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.” ~ Marcel Proust

Hello all!

I’ve been a Marcel Proust fan for years after reading a book about the writer called, How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain De Botton. For those of you who are not familiar with the quirky, yet wise and sympathetic french author who died in 1922, Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust wrote the epic: In Search of Lost Time, also know as À la recherche du temps perdu. Years ago, I got out the heavy 7 volume tome and tried to read the 3,200 pages, but could not get past the first 200. Exhausting! It’s the kind of book you almost need to take as a class in order to make yourself stay with it. However, I wanted to “read” it so I cheated and watched the movie. He spends a lot of  his life ill in bed reflecting back on his life – much of it as a child at the beach – and the lessons he has learned. 

How Proust Can Change Your Life lays out Proust’s lessons, which all essential boil down to a recommendation to slow your life down to the point where you can pay attention to it and learn from it. Chapters like, How To Take Your Time, How to Express Your Emotions or How To Open Your Eyes will charm you.

Again, I find myself blogging here about slowing down this thing called life so you can appreciate it. We are all galloping to the ends of our lives being prodded by an unseen force that tells us we need to constantly upgrade, what I call the Upgrade Syndrome. Nothing is good in its present condition according to those who advise us. Our education, our homes, our clothes, our gadgets, our selves, our bodies, our technology and while it’s fine to want to evolve, it’s important to be happy where you are at any moment and relish in the present you. Otherwise, what’s the point of living?

Often when we travel to Europe, my husband and I get there and go, go, go. We need to be on the move, see everything. Then about halfway through we start spending more time just sitting in cafes, relaxing. The culture is much slower over there. They converse, they eat, they stroll, they talk and walk at the same time. They are definitely in less of a hurry. For example, during our four days in Madrid, Spain, we started out each morning at this tea/pastry shop. I loved it! What do we do here in the states – rush, rush, rush. And we make the kids rush, rush, rush. And learn, learn, learn (which is more like cram, cram, cram, since they will forget most of it and I have argued here that real learning is slow, sometimes even accidental, more self directed and two-way.)

Anyway, I stumbled on this interactive Proust Questionnaire at the Vanity Fair Magazine site, took it and thought you might like to “slow” down and take it yourself. The questionnaire was put together by a friend of Marcel Proust’s named Antoinette for her “Confession Album,” An album to record thoughts and feelings. I love that!

Below is the link, perhaps take the test — it will make you slow down and think – and tell us below which luminary you aligned with. I’m honored to say that I had a 92% match with the wonderful author Nora Ephron, followed by Johnny Cash! Well, I write and sing so that’s pretty interesting.

Take The Proust Questionnaire by clicking on this!

Have fun! G.