Tuesday, August 26, 2003
Regrets
I examine my body and I realize that I’m mortal. As youth slips away, I’m faced with the fact that I’m not in the best shape, my skin is soft, and not made out of bullet proof Kevlar/Teflon mesh, my blood is curiously exposed in easily accessible vessels that if breached, could cause me no end of trouble. I neglected to have adamantium grafted onto my skeleton during my last checkup, and now I don’t have insurance. If I lose a limb, I can’t replace it. In short, I’m going to die.
Knowing that I’m going to die someday soon… in the next fifty to eighty years… leads me to think wistfully about all the things I’ll never get a chance to do with my life:
I’ll never get to walk on the surface of Mars. I’ll never be president of the United States. I’ll never sing Cole Porter tunes at Carnegie Hall. I won’t see the Sun run out of nuclear fuel and implode. I’ll never kiss Marilyn Monroe (or if I did, she won’t kiss me back). I’ll never get to see what the center of the Earth looks like. I’ll never be a Samurai. I’ll never read every book printed. I’ll never found a royal dynasty that rules the planet for millennia. I’ll never float on the event horizon of a black hole and watch time stand still. I’ll never photosynthesize. I’ll never be The Chosen One. I’ll never pilot a giant robot through the streets of Tokyo. I’ll never travel back in time and become my own great grandmother. I’ll never have a tail.
It’s hard not to become sad when I think about all the things I’ll never do.
