More compelling drawing room confessions
Questionnaire-guided self-exploration can aid efforts to ‘outgrow oneself’ - a phrase I credit to The Marginalian. Answers to the following would likely be more insightful, and more of a call to action, than answers to Proust’s original questions:
In relation to shoulds
What do you consider your greatest responsibility?
What honourable ambition stirs you?
What moral dilemma of history fascinates or torments you?
What experiment do you long to attempt?
What habit of yours maintains your dignity?

In relation to weakness
What part of your nature is truly your own, and what parts are borrowed from habit, praise or fear?
What do you avoid seeing in yourself?
What part of your life would appear most absurd to a wise sage?
What mistakes do you repeat?
What desire most distracts your mind?
What wound troubles you more than it ought?

In relation to your humanity
What contradiction do you embody?
What do you seek to control?
What price have you already agreed to pay for the life you think you deserve?
What do you suffer for the sake of wisdom?
What book changed the way you see the world?
What short passage would you choose as your epitaph?