Rosalind Eleazar: What is the most important lesson life has taught you?

The question

What is the most important lesson life has taught you?

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.

Rosalind Eleazar

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here

That fear and excitement sometimes feel quite similar and you can misinterpret one for the other.

The Q&A, The Guardian, 22 February 2025 source ↗

Others on this question

View all 155 →

Daphne Guinness British socialite

Discipline. Also to have a goal, however small and whatever it may be.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 27 July 2024 source ↗

Richard Feynman Theoretical physicist; Nobel laureate in Physics, 1965

It is necessary, I believe, to accept this idea, not only for science, but also for other things; it is of great value to acknowledge ignorance. It is a fact that when we make decisions in our life we don't necessarily know that we are making them correctly; we only think that we are doing the best we can – and that is what we should do.

Recorded Caltech YMCA Lunch Forum, Engineering and Science / Caltech Magazine, 2 May 1956 source ↗

Shobna Gulati

If somebody doesn’t want to understand or see you that’s on them. You don’t have to carry that with you.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 October 2025 source ↗

Dervla Kirwan

To know thyself, as Shakespeare said.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 28 October 2023 source ↗

More from Rosalind Eleazar

View profile →

Question What most recently made you cry? Identity & self

Watching the documentary The Remarkable Life of Ibelin [about a gamer who died at 25 of a degenerative muscular disease]. I bawled.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 22 February 2025 source ↗

Question What is the trait you most deplore in others? Values & belief

Unbending opinions.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 22 February 2025 source ↗

Question Who most deserves an apology from you, and why? Failure & regret

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.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 22 February 2025 source ↗