That fear and excitement sometimes feel quite similar and you can misinterpret one for the other.
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Question
What does love feel like?
Relationships
Question
When was the last time you changed your mind about something?
Change of mind
Question
What is your worst intellectual habit?
Craft & work
Question
What has been your biggest disappointment?
Failure & regret
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Question
What happens when we die?
Death & what remains
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.
Every single morning the sun comes up and you get to try again.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 14 March 2026 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 137 →Genuine love is given freely, not by force.
Life’s too short to take offence.
Do the secret thing you know you were born to do.
More from Sarah Perry
View profile →Like it’s worth being alive.
I am so obdurate I do not change my mind.
I’ve a deplorable tendency to become entrenched in my own prejudices: If I dislike an artist, an art form, or an idea (jazz, ballet, certain kinds of fiction) it is extremely difficult to get me to change my mind, and all evidence presented to the contrary will be discarded and very likely mocked. Of course, nobody suffers but me.
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.
Not being loved.
I have never been able to become an atheist and, even though I know it is completely irrational and cannot be backed up, I think when I die I’m going to glory.
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