RA
You have to ride the wave and never wait for it to be calm, because it never will be.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 24 August 2024 source ↗
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.
Others on this question
View all 138 →Life’s too short to take offence.
Matthew Modine
American actor
That we are all no more and no less than a single thread in a gigantic web of life. What we do and how we behave has repercussions for the entire web.
When something is half price in a supermarket, always find out why.
Lil Nas X
American rapper
That I can’t control it.
More from Rose Ayling-Ellis
View profile →“I’ll tell you later.” They never do.
Dolly Parton. I love how she does what she wants, and lives how she wants, keeping her life so private. Also, she helped fund Covid vaccine research.
Rapping the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme on national television.
If emergency train announcements were written up on the information screen. The times I ended up at the wrong destination could easily have been avoided.
That my work has given deaf children more confidence in themselves and a sense of ownership of who they are.
My dad’s family, for fake drowning when I was 12 on holiday in France – it caused such embarrassment that we had to leave. All because I wanted to get the inflatable ring off my brother. It still haunts me. I guess acting was always going to be my future.
More on time & hindsight
- What period or moment in your life brought you the most joy? 577 answers
- What counsel would you give your twenty-year-old self — and what should they ignore? 78 answers
- What worries you about getting older? 61 answers
- What counsel has proved most valuable to you? 28 answers
- If you could put a message on a giant billboard, what would it say and why? 25 answers
- What line from a parent, teacher, or mentor do you still repeat to yourself? 23 answers
Also answered this
Robert Carlyle, Paapa Essiedu, Felicity Jones, Sofia Coppola, Rita Wilson, Helen George
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All time & hindsight questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject