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.
Moments of vanity, carelessness and unkindness.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 17 January 2026 source ↗
I would have started therapy earlier.
When I thought maybe I've just got a few weeks, I thought God this is what they mean by the reckoning. I've got to sort all this stuff out in days. Is it possible to sort out all those things in your past that you'd prefer not to have done? ... But actually by going through the process we've gone through, I think we have. And it's a real blessing to have this time do that.
I would have tried that anti-stretch mark cream during pregnancy.
I was probably too cheeky to chairmen over the years.
Living in a ski resort.
A painting of a man who was killed on the Dutch coast in 1600.
The US election showed me that I had trapped myself in wishful thinking.
Surprise. Smiles. Courage. Safety.
Carelessness of truth and others.
Having somebody pull my judo trousers down at a competition when I was seven. And finding I wasn’t wearing any pants.
Desmond Tutu, Emma Barnett, Anita Rani, Jimmy Carter, Keir Starmer, Gloria Steinem
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