Minimum effort, maximum satisfaction. That’s the way everyone should live.
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.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 22 March 2025 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 144 →We’re not here for long so don’t be wreaking havoc along the way.
The more you face shame and stare it in the eyes and talk about it, the less potent it is.
Be true to yourself.
More from Chris Bonington
View profile →Compassion, resourcefulness and resilience form a rounded good person. So that’s what I’d like to leave my children and grandchildren.
I was a huge daydreamer and imagined myself as a successful general leading his troops into battle.
Becoming more physically active.
I left the army and got a job with Unilever in Northern Ireland. They were very strict and you had to have a hat, and when you went into a shop you had to raise your hat to the shopkeeper and then sell your wares. I was selling margarine.
Everest the hard way in 1975: leading the expedition that succeeded where so many people had tried and failed. That was the most complex mountaineering challenge I ever faced. I spent hours at night in a little tent thinking about what the next problem would be and how to solve it.
There are so many instances when I’ve come very close to death that it’s difficult to pick one.
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