L-O-V-E

To fall in love, do this. That’s the name of a New York Times article that’s been making the rounds for the past couple of weeks. I first heard about the article on Hallie’s blog. It’s so interesting! The basic idea is that a psychologist performed a study where he discovered that he could cause two strangers to fall in love by having them answer a set of 36 personal questions.

The questions are broken up into 3 sets and the questions become more personal/intimate as you progress. Once you’re done answering the questions, you’re supposed to stare into the other person’s eyes for a period of four minutes. Answering these questions and maintaining eye contact creates an accelerated form of intimacy between the two people and a few of the couples in the study did, in fact, fall in love and get married.

Hallie answered a few of these questions on her blog and left an open call at the end of her post, so I thought it would be fun to answer a few of the questions too. I picked nine of the questions- three from each set. Hopefully you’ll get to know me a little better through these answers. Who knows? We might just fall in love…

Would you like to be famous? In what way? When I was younger, I thought it would be awesome to be famous. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be Beyoncé for a day? Now that I’m older and have realized that I’m definitely an introvert, I know there’s no way I could handle being famous. I value my privacy too much. Of course, I do have this little old blog where I share personal tidbits with total strangers… (Side note: Someone once asked me how I’m able to share personal stuff online and I couldn’t explain it very well at the time. I think it boils down to the fact that it’s much easier for me to write about my feelings and share them at a distance, than talk it over in person with someone).

Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why? No, not really. I’ve been in the “real world” for years now but telephone calls at work still make me a tiny bit nervous. I don’t think you can hear it in my voice, but when the phone rings I’m like, “Why are you calling me? Don’t you have email??”

If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want? I’m pretty sure I’d pick the mind. I recently watched The Theory of Everything and it was rather inspiring. Stephen Hawking was limited by his body in so many ways, but he was still able to do incredible things with his mind.

If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know? Here’s what I’d ask the crystal ball: Will I fall in love? Will I ever figure “it” out? Where will my siblings and I be in 20 years?

What do you value most in a friendship? Someone who I can just be myself with. When I hang out with my closest friends, I don’t have to be “on” and I don’t have to worry about friendship politics. We can just be.

If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why? Yikes, I’d change a bunch of things. I know that I’m not living my life to the fullest right now (probably not even up to 50%), so I’d stop settling in many aspects of my life and just do what I wanna do.

If you were going to become a close friend with your partner readers, please share what would be important for him or her to know. Give me donuts and we’ll be friends forever. Beyoncé is everything. I do not eat cheese- you must be able to wrap your head around this (You don’t even know how many friendships I’ve lost over this. Just kidding).

When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself? Hmmm, I can’t quite remember. Possibly when I found out my little brother had been in a car accident. The last time I cried by myself was last weekend when I watched 12 Years a Slave (that movie wrecked me).

Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why? I’d like to say my books, but in reality I’d probably try and grab all of the major electronics- computer, iPhone, camera.

If you read that article, I’d love to know what you think about the concept. Also, if you decide to write a post about this, link back here and to Hallie’s post so we can read your answers! (If you need to know how to fall out of love, read this humorous New Yorker post).