Aung San Suu Kyi, Caetano Veloso, Terry and Jo Harvey Allen, Ford Wheeler, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning. My late father.
Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, December 2014 source ↗
The question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's Q&A repeatedly uses this prompt, sometimes dropping 'living' while retaining the same comparative judgment.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Aung San Suu Kyi, Caetano Veloso, Terry and Jo Harvey Allen, Ford Wheeler, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning. My late father.
Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, December 2014 source ↗
All women who slog their guts out every day, quietly getting on with bringing up their families.
I most admire Steve Sondheim, who is not alive anymore. But his words and music keep him alive.
Harriet Harman. I know how hard it is to do what she’s doing.
And, you know, Chris Sharma obviously was like setting all kinds of world record type things when I was a kid. I was just like, “Oh, he’s so amazing.” And Tommy Caldwell was also a big hero, which has been cool because now I get to climb with Tommy as an adult and I’m just like, “Oh, that’s pretty cool.” I’m still always excited to climb with Tommy.
Wow, these are big questions! Happiness, as I’ve experienced it and observed it in others, seems to be random—some of us are happy fairly regularly (I am, mostly), and some of us not as much—but there seems to be no clear explanation as to why. It comes and goes at unexpected moments, too. The graph of happiness doesn’t even seem to match what is going on in our lives. Or maybe it does and we don’t know it. Money—is there a connection between money and happiness? It takes away a world of worries and anxieties, but are rich folks all happy? Are you kidding? Donald Trump is ALWAYS scowling. That said, it’s hard to be happy if you don’t know where you’ll sleep or where your next meal is coming from. The pursuit of happiness? Where are we supposed to look? Are there clues hidden somewhere? The very act of searching and striving for it can lead to frustration and unhappiness. I suspect that happiness finds you—I’m not sure you can find a road that leads to it. Happiness is everywhere, though some cultures are, I’ve read, happier overall than others—G.N.P. be damned. Is sunshine one of those things? Are tropical folks generally happier?
I’ll know it when I see it. Hello, Room 101.
Ernest Borgnine, David Haye, Natalie Imbruglia, John Simpson, Vinnie Jones, Ice-T
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