A deep sense that they will be fine in the world without me.
What would you like to leave your children?
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
Question
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Values & belief
Question
What does love feel like?
Relationships
Question
What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
Daily life
Question
Which book are you ashamed not to have read?
Taste & recommendation
Question
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Failure & regret
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Verbatim recurring item in The Guardian Q&A; two publisher-hosted respondent pages establish institutional recurrence.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
I’ve got no kids, but I’d like us to leave a planet for everyone’s children.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 6 December 2025 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 47 →That they were loved.
Tony Judt
Historian and essayist
So it seems to be my responsibility, particularly to my children, also to my wife and friends, is not to be Pollyanna and pretend everything's okay no one would take me seriously if I said that but it's to be as present in their lives now as I can be so that in years to come, they don't feel either guilty or bad at my having been left out of their lives, that they feel still a very strong not a memory of particular actions but a memory of a complete family rather than a broken one. That seems to be something I can do or try to do.
Compassion, resourcefulness and resilience form a rounded good person. So that’s what I’d like to leave my children and grandchildren.
More from Zack Polanski
View profile →I get trolled on a daily basis so it probably involved my teeth, but that was until I learned to love my teeth.
Those who create the doom.
A dog bounding through the grass on a summer’s day chasing a squirrel.
Proportional representation.
I’m going to confess I haven’t finished The Climate Book by Greta Thunberg.
Nothing. Tony Benn, one of my favourite politicians, said, “I don’t care where you’ve been, I care where you’re going.”
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Also answered this
Jon Sopel, Mohamed ElBaradei, Keir Starmer, Tony Judt, Paul Kalanithi, Romola Garai
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