The question
If you could revise one chapter of your past, what would you change?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Repeated verbatim in The Guardian's long-running Saturday Q&A; two publisher-hosted examples establish recurrence.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
I sometimes wish I had had the courage to be a politician – but I made the decision to be a human rights defender instead. I realised I cannot be both at the same time, because they may be incompatible.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 7 March 2020 source ↗
I wouldn’t have drunk alcohol.
Perhaps a few drunken incidents – but I’ll keep the coat.
I’d change my mindset and not be so hard on myself, and impart the knowledge that other people’s intentions aren’t always as well-meaning as my own.
I’d have stuck with the original Dexys Midnight Runners look we started in 1978, which became known as the New Romantic look a couple of years later. Our management and record label talked us out of it. Later, Duran Duran and Spandau came out with that look and that made us look old-fashioned.
The climate catastrophe.
Walking in the rainforest with my mother, back in Nicaragua. She loved it, and inspired me to devote much of my life to protecting the environment.
I was brought up Catholic, to believe that marriage is for life. And we failed.
More sleep, less stress.
To my daughter, because she felt that I spent too much time saving other children. I would go to war zones and travel the world for human rights work, and she was missing me.
Mary McCartney, Nicholson Baker, Ricky Wilson, Dermot O'Leary, Omid Djalili, Björn Ulvaeus
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