Not to have been joined by more Green MPs … yet.
What has been your biggest disappointment?
Question
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Failure & regret
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
What most recently made you cry?
Identity & self
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
This exact question recurs in The Guardian's institutional Q&A pool.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
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.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 October 2021 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 366 →
Rory Kinnear
English actor
Finding cucumber in things is a continual disappointment.
Paul Giamatti
American actor
This year? Losing to François Englert and Pete Higgs. I truly thought I had that in the bag.
Steph McGovern
Broadcaster
Some famous people. I am not giving you names.
More from Noah Harari
View profile →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 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.
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.
Now. I’ve learned to adjust my expectations to reality better than when I was 20 or 10.
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.
More on failure & regret
- Who most deserves an apology from you, and why? 209 answers
- If you could edit your past, what would you change? 203 answers
- What is the worst thing anyone has said to you? 122 answers
- Which moment embarrassed you most? 122 answers
- How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure? 63 answers
- What is the hardest thing that has happened to you, and what did you carry out of it? 36 answers
Also answered this · A–Z
Abigail Breslin, Adam Clayton, Adam Kay, Adam Lambert, Adeel Akhtar, Adrian Dunbar
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