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 is never fair.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 28 June 2025 source ↗
A 'no' is free.
To do the very best you can and then let it go.
To stay in the moment and live each day to the maximum. You never know when it’s going to be taken away.
Perspective. I used to zoom in and it would be all catastrophic, now I zoom out and get a bit of perspective.
Being let go from Strictly.
One after the other, thoughts come banging in – and it’s no sleep for you tonight, dearie.
In a Dagenham factory at 6am, picking soldiers’ greatcoats from wars around the world to sell at the market in Chelsea. I smelled like mothballs, and no one would come near me.
In school, I was 11, and we had to paint a picture of family life. My painting was held up to the class and I was told it looked like a spider with ink on its feet had walked across the page. It was done so viciously – humiliating.
My daughters and granddaughters.
A Biba dress when I really couldn’t afford it. It was every scrap of my money and I’ve never parted with it.
Kerry Godliman, Minnie Driver, Robert Carlyle, Ronnie O'Sullivan, Lil Nas X, Sharon Corr
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