Being aware and accepting of whatever the state of my mind happens to be at the moment (even if that state is unhappy).
The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 25 January 2023 source ↗
The question
What does happiness look like for you when life is going well?Originally asked
Vanity Fair, to its interview subject, The Proust Questionnaire
Verbatim recurring item in Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire; two publisher-hosted respondent pages establish institutional recurrence.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Others on this question
View all 158 →A walk on the Golden Strand beach in County Mayo, on the West Coast of Ireland.
Creating something and feeling proud of it.
Barack Obama
44th President of the United States, 2009–2017; United States Senator from Illinois 2005–2008
When I feel as if the people closest to me are happy and healthy and I'm connected with them, and when I feel as if I'm doing things that are making other people better and happy, then I feel real good. That's when I'm at my peak.
Late one Sunday afternoon, my three-year-old granddaughter, out of the blue, took my hand and said she wanted to whisper something to me. Could we go for a ride around the block before we all sat down for dinner? Just the two of us? Holding hands as we walked to and from the car in the driveway: Bliss.
More from George Saunders
View profile →Pittsford, New York, writing my first book when our kids were small, riding my bike to work because we only had one car…that feeling of being needed and loved and vitally involved in something artistic that I didn’t fully understand, everything still lying ahead of us.
I’d like to have a more generous, less anxious mind.
Read incorrectly, that sounds like a threat. No thanks, Vanity Fair !
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Karl Ove Knausgård, Elmore Leonard, Danielle Steel, Zadie Smith, Joyce Carol Oates, Eugene Levy
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