The exact median middle-aged black woman in the US. If hard work guaranteed success, she’d be the most successful person on the planet. But she isn’t, yet she keeps on going.
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Question
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Craft & work
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
What does love feel like?
Relationships
Question
What has been your biggest disappointment?
Failure & regret
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
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.
Artists who do their own thing, without compromise: Ken Loach, Bob Dylan and James Kelman.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 24 December 2016 source ↗
Others on this question
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Judith Kerr
British writer and illustrator
No one I can think of, but lots of people no longer living.
Anyone who speaks truth to power at the risk of their own safety.
Dominic West
English actor
Stacey Dooley. She does incredible documentaries – in one, she took spoiled British kids to the Philippines to work in a factory. It’s exactly what my kids need to watch.
More from Irvine Welsh
View profile →I haven’t achieved anything of note yet.
Laying down slabs for the council.
When you can barely stand to look at someone without turning away to catch your breath.
There’s been the odd beauty on the dance floor I really ought to have gone home with.
Happiness is mostly intrinsic: you’re either a happy soul or a miserable bastard. Fortunately, I’m the former.
When a pal grabbed hold of me as I fell into an unbanistered stairwell at a rave. Would have been curtains, but for his sharp reaction.
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