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.
My happiest moment was being in the room when my daughter was born, and seeing her draw her first breath and turn from what looked like gray clay into the deepest, most vibrant, most psychedelic crimson. It was an unforgettable, unimaginable explosion of energy and potential—of promise and pure love.
Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, January 2014 source ↗
As a boy in a tree.
Every morning when I go into our three-year-old’s room. He’s so happy to see you, it’s a moment of heaven.
Professionally, it has to be when I got my third star.
Well, when in 1994 he was elected and I was given the privilege of introducing him to South Africa as our new president and to the world, I sort of whispered to God and said, “God, I don’t really mind now. I mean, if I die now, it would be almost the perfect moment.
Perfection is a second-rate idea. I would guess, however, that perfected happiness would be joy, the most intricate and mercurial of all sensations. The moment one recognizes joy, it flees. I’m not sure where Proust is going with this line of questioning, and I don’t want to be evasive, so I will say my idea of perfect happiness is the end of economics; we grow like flowers and fly like birds; the lion lays down with the lamb—a ridiculous idea.
I would like to die in good health, at an old age, in a house on a mountain that looks out over the ocean, dreaming about everyone and everything I have had the impossible good fortune to have loved. Maybe Ralph Stanley is singing “Angel Band.”
Alison Goldfrapp, Melanie Chisholm, Brett Anderson, Elaine Paige, Donny Osmond, Suzi Quatro
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