Not feeling old but everyone treating you that way.
What scares you about getting older?
Question
Which book are you ashamed not to have read?
Taste & recommendation
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
What most recently made you cry?
Identity & self
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Question
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Time & hindsight
Question
How would you describe yourself in three words?
Identity & self
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A newer fixed question in The Guardian's rotating Q&A pool.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Pain and loneliness.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 28 October 2023 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 61 →Absolutely nothing. It’s a privilege.
Edmund Hillary
Mountaineer and explorer; first ascent of Everest, 1953
I’ve been very fortunate in that respect. In the early days I liked to be the bomb of the expedition, and rush on ahead and do things faster than anybody else. Those days merged very pleasantly into periods when I organized and inspired expeditions and selected these younger people who were then the bombs of the operation. And then it drifted into this involvement with the people of the area, still loving the mountains, but finding the people just as important too. And on and on it’s gone. As I get older and less physically capable, I find other challenges have grown up and become just as important to me.
Possible dementia.
More from Dervla Kirwan
View profile →I’ve never got through Ulysses.
About five years ago, I was in a play that was an unmitigated disaster. I had to rally the troops and go out every night.
At my mother’s funeral last year.
Procrastination.
To know thyself, as Shakespeare said.
Warm, intelligent, accommodating.
More on time & hindsight
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- What is the most important lesson life has taught you? 137 answers
- What advice would you give your twenty-year-old self, and what should they ignore? 78 answers
- What is the best advice you have ever received? 28 answers
- If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere, what would it say and why? 23 answers
- What is something you were told by a parent, teacher, or mentor that you still repeat to yourself? 23 answers
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