If you could edit 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.

Recorded Corinne Bailey Rae said elsewhere, not written here
I wouldn’t change anything. When I was 29, my first husband died, so I learned a new way of thinking about life, which is: there are many things that you can’t control.

The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 September 2023 source ↗

Others on this question

View all 203 →
Jeremy Vine English presenter and journalist
I’d stop my teenage self worrying about how my life was going to pan out.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 17 August 2019 source ↗
Julia Stiles American actress
I’d have been less precocious as a child (you grow up fast in New York). I’d have prolonged the naivety.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 4 July 2015 source ↗
Jimmy Carter 39th President of the United States, 1977–1981; Governor of Georgia 1971–1975
I wish I sent one more helicopter to get the hostages and we would have rescued then and I - I would have been re-elected, but that may have - and that may have interfered with the foundation of the Carter Center. And if I had to choose between four more years and the Carter Center, I think I would choose the Carter Center.
Recorded News conference at the Carter Center, Atlanta, as transcribed by CNN, 20 August 2015 source ↗
Gino D'Acampo Italian-British celebrity chef and media personality
I would have spent more time with my parents. I did see them often, but you don’t realise how much you’ll miss someone or something until it’s gone.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 3 December 2022 source ↗

More from Corinne Bailey Rae

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Question Which living person do you most admire, and why? Values & belief
My mum, for the way that she brought up her three children and managed to make her money work. She worked as a cleaner for all these families we went to church with. She would cycle there with my little sister on the back of her bike – we didn’t have a car. She had an amazing mind for planning and organising so that we got to do ballet, we went to Brownies.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 September 2023 source ↗

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