Every time I play tennis I come back with a fresh injury.
What scares you about getting older?
Question
Who most deserves an apology from you, and why?
Failure & regret
Question
What song would you like played at your funeral?
Death & what remains
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
Question
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Identity & self
Question
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Time & hindsight
Question
What would you like to leave your children?
Death & what remains
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A newer fixed question in The Guardian's rotating Q&A pool.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
That I didn’t appreciate the smaller joys in life.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 22 February 2025 source ↗
Others on this question
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Steve Jobs
Co-founder and chief executive of Apple; co-founder of NeXT; chief executive of Pixar
It’s often the same with any new, revolutionary thing. People get stuck as they get older. Our minds are sort of electrochemical computers. Your thoughts construct patterns like scaffolding in your mind. You are really etching chemical patterns. In most cases, people get stuck in those patterns, just like grooves in a record, and they never get out of them.
Margaret Atwood
Novelist, poet and critic
Long, lingering dementia, followed by death from choking on a fishbone.
Instead of saying, “I tripped up”, you have to use the words, “I had a fall.”
More from Rosalind Eleazar
View profile →My closest friend at uni – I sometimes retreat from life in quite an extreme way, without word. Back then, I didn’t really understand what I was doing.
Happy Day by Sarkodie. I’m half Ghanaian, and in Ghana funerals really are a celebration of life. You dance and sing; it’s just a completely different vibe to over here in the UK. I would hope at my funeral that everyone’s on their feet, having a good time.
I don’t think you could print it, it’s so bad.
An air traffic controller.
That fear and excitement sometimes feel quite similar and you can misinterpret one for the other.
A sense of what really matters.
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- What is the best advice you have ever received? 37 answers
- What is something you were told by a parent, teacher, or mentor that you still repeat to yourself? 26 answers
- If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere, what would it say and why? 25 answers
Also answered this
Juliet Stevenson, Marina Abramović, Peter Sarsgaard, George H. W. Bush, Kurt Vonnegut, Milton Jones
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