The question
What lesson has mattered most in your life?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Verbatim recurring item in The Guardian Q&A; two fully readable publisher-hosted respondent pages establish institutional recurrence.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Life’s too short to take offence.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 4 July 2026 source ↗
The more you face shame and stare it in the eyes and talk about it, the less potent it is.
To stay in the moment and live each day to the maximum. You never know when it’s going to be taken away.
Live in the moment. Enjoy life because time cruelly speeds up as you get older and becomes scarily finite.
Keep working, improving your step.
Talking about the hardships of my mother’s life – she would not approve.
I bumped into an old schoolteacher and her even more ancient and deaf sister, and she shouted to her, “Remember Esther? Now she writes books … ABOUT HERSELF.”
Small, determined, lucky.
Safety or alarm, I can never decide which.
An inability to see the other side.
I can always see two points of view, which makes it hard to have a row.
Felicity Jones, Ronnie O'Sullivan, Gino D'Acampo, Rebecca Ferguson, Indira Varma, Kelly Hoppen
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