Bittersweet Quiz

How bittersweet are you at this moment in time?

Question 1 of 15

Do you tear up easily at touching TV commercials?

Question 2 of 15

Are you especially moved by old photographs?

Question 3 of 15

Do you react intensely to music, art or nature?

Question 4 of 15

Have others described you as an “old soul”?

Question 5 of 15

Do you find comfort or inspiration in a rainy day?

Question 6 of 15

Do you know what the author C.S. Lewis meant when he described joy as a “sharp, wonderful stab of longing”?

Question 7 of 15

Do you prefer poetry to sports (or maybe you find the poetry in sports)?

Question 8 of 15

Are you moved to goosebumps several times a day?

Question 9 of 15

Do you see “the tears in things”? (This phrase comes from Virgil’s Aeneid.)

Question 10 of 15

Do you feel elevated by sad music?

Question 11 of 15

Do you tend to see the happiness and sadness in things, all at once?

Question 12 of 15

Do you seek out beauty in your everyday life?

Question 13 of 15

Does the word poignant especially resonate with you?

Question 14 of 15

When you have conversations with close friends, are you drawn to talking about their past or current troubles?

Question 15 of 15

And this: Do you feel the ecstatic is close at hand?

Your score: out of 10

You tend toward the sanguine (cheerfully optimistic).

You tend to move easily between sanguine and bittersweet states (or to experience both states to moderate degrees).

You’re a true connoisseur of bittersweetness: the place where light and dark meet.

Source: Copyright © 2022 by Susan Cain. All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Crown, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

Credit: Koko Nakajima/NPR