If you had to conduct all electronic communication with your friends and colleagues using only one of the following—phone, text, email, or social media—which would you choose and how do you think it would change your relationships?
text, for sure. I'm coming to loathe social media, find that email is more pressure than pleasure, and of course I passionately hate the telephone. How would it change my relationships? Not at all. Most people I know are only in contact with me by text, too. One person tenaciously refuses to stop calling, but I have basically given up answering. I use my phone only for calling out, and then only for business purposes that cannot be handled otherwise.
When you are with your friends, do your interactions include much hugging, kissing, roughhousing, rubbing backs, and such? Would you like to have less or more of such touching?
I have some huggy friends and some reserved friends. There is a woman who always hugs repeatedly during any interaction (and often tears up); there is another who, to my recollection, has never actually touched me (nor anyone else in my presence). I have a male friend who kisses on the mouth (platonically), another who hugs but at a distance, and several others with whom I've never been at a hug stage. I suppose it depends on our relationship, and the immediate circumstances (are we in an aisle at the busy grocery store, or saying hello when meeting for a leisurely dinner after months' absence?), and who is watching. During high school and college I was much more physically affectionate than I am now. It's been caused by a combination of factors, such as surviving the pandemic, experiencing the ebb and flow of friendship, and even simple aging. Touches are more rare and so more treasured and thoughtfully given rather than gorged like dip on chips.
Do you think that having a deep, enduring feeling of fulfillment about what you are presently doing would enhance or diminish your life? In what ways might such feelings alter your current relationships? what if I already do have "a deep, enduring feeling of fulfillment about what [I am] presently doing"?
Fulfillment seems like a moving target, like "happiness" or "success". When I was 18, decorating a cake was fulfilling, and decorating 50 cakes in a bakery shift was a good day's work. Now, decorating a cake for anything but personal consumption would be a pain in the hands, a struggle for the eyes, and a waste of time.
If you could become brilliant by having a visible scar stretching from your mouth to your ear, would you?
and the logical connection between a facial scar and brilliance is...?
Ah, that's right, there is
a precedent. I don't welcome physical pain or disfigurement, and I am probably "brilliant" enough to get by in the world today. I'll say No to this one.
If a close friend asked, and genuinely wanted, your opinion, but you knew he'd find it painful—for example, he's an artist and asks your honest appraisal of his artistic talent, and you think he's lousy—would you tell him the truth? ugh, this one is hard to answer. If someone is a good friend, then my inexpert opinion about their hobby or skill or artistic expression means less than the friendship. For me to say, "I don't think it's very good," would imply that I value my own judgment over their feelings. Who am I to say?
If someone is not a good friend, then they are not likely to ask my opinion.
Along the same lines, if a friend asks if I like their haircut or if this item of clothing looks good on them, I'm likely to see
the friend, not the hair or the clothes. Is it what I would have chosen? Maybe not. But do I care about them, and want to encourage them to feel confident and attractive? Heck, yeah. So there's some balance there. I'll definitely pick fuzz off your shoulder or let you know when you've a 'wardrobe malfunction', to prevent embarrassment or annoyance, but I'm not going to undermine your self-esteem by sharing my judgments.
How do you feel about taking a sick day when you aren't sick? How about falsifying an expense report? If an ATM gave you extra cash, would you report the error?
I appreciate the trend toward referring to paid time off as just that, rather than calling it "sick time" and pretending that workers are always actually physically ill when they need a day off. If you're hiring grown-ups, then you should realize there are some things that people must do during a week day: renew a driver's license, meet the appliance repairer, take the pet to the vet, and so on. There are also times when being at work is a terrible idea because one is not in the proper frame of mind to do good work (or refrain from smacking one's coworkers). Why not just allow staff to say, I've earned some time off, and I'm taking a day. Falsifying an expense report is fraud and theft. That's a different story entirely, always wrong.
If an ATM gave me extra cash, most of the time I wouldn't notice it anyway. Yep, I'm the kind of person who pokes the buttons, receives the money, and after a very cursory check to see that it's the right amount, stuff it in the wallet and move on. I'm not going to stand in the grocery store waving a packet of bills. So, if it happened, I'd likely not notice—but if I did notice, I'd probably not report it. Are we talking $20, or $2000? And to whom would it be accountable anyway? The bank, the store, the cash network? I should probably care, but practically speaking it's so highly unlikely to happen that one needn't pre-plan it.
If you were hypnotized to make your biggest worry fade away, how would your life change?
I'd be fit and lean and way more healthy, if I could be hypnotized into eating right and exercising. If only!
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