The question
What disappointment has stayed with you longest?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
This exact question recurs in The Guardian's institutional Q&A pool.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Not to have been joined by more Green MPs … yet.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 20 April 2024 source ↗
Not doing as well as I’d hoped in dancing competitions. I was massively competitive and massively disappointed most of the time. It’s the same now.
My A-level results in 1998. I flunked my history A-level and lost my place at Cambridge. It broke my heart for years; now I’m really glad, because I pull out the whole “I went to a polytechnic” thing. But at the time for a teenager who was rather pleased with herself, it was absolutely devastating.
Any lost match is, of course, disappointing, but every loss is a lesson to be learned.
Not doing Top Of The Pops when The Young Ones’ single went to number one.
Being on my deathbed and realising I’d forgotten to treat each day as the miracle that it is.
Following the Zen proverb: you should sit and meditate for 20 minutes; if you’re too busy, then you should sit and meditate for an hour.
Passionate, mum, green.
I very often set my heart on things – and if they don’t happen, I’m not great at dealing with disappointment.
Jacinda Ardern, the former New Zealand prime minister – for embodying a different, more compassionate politics.
For making a difference.
Zoë Heller, Barack Obama, Jacqui Smith, Kirsty Wark, Samira Ahmed, Angela Eagle
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