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Now. I’ve learned to adjust my expectations to reality better than when I was 20 or 10.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 October 2021 source ↗
The question
What period or moment in your life brought you the most joy?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Asked in 52 of the 131 consecutive instalments of The Guardian's The Q&A harvested on 2026-08-29.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Others on this question
View all 577 →
Father John Misty
American musician
Whenever it was, it’s likely I was actually miserable, destitute and alone.
Kwame Kwei-Armah
Actor and playwright
When my mother was alive. She passed away 14 years ago.
Beth Ditto
American singer
When everyone else is happy.
Alison Steadman
British actress
When my son was born and I realised I was a mum.
More from Noah Harari
View profile →That I still don’t understand life. When I was young, I thought at some point I would find somebody who does. I am 45, and there is a good chance that I’ll never meet somebody like that.
On a personal level, the friend who is a single mum raising two kids by herself during this Covid era. She is a real hero. If a historical personality, I choose Mikhail Gorbachev, who probably saved the world from world war three.
When I was 16, at the beginning of the summer vacation, I worked in a factory that made industrial valves and I was a much worse industrial valve producer than historian.
I would like to come out at 16 or 17, and not 21.
I was almost run over by a bus when I was 13. And in 1991, in the Gulf war, an Iraqi missile hit close to my house.
When my dog died a couple of years ago. We were in Greece on vacation and a friend was watching her at home, and she was bitten by a snake. We rushed home, but we were too late by a few hours.
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