I hold within this body infinite potential – and you’ll never get me to admit otherwise!

What I write now may be hard for some to believe, but I can only assure you that to the best of my conscience I do not lie, exaggerate or embellish this:

If I had a thousand bodies, each living for a thousand years, I would still not have time for all the things that interest me, and which are easily within my reach to do. To read all the books I would like to read, to learn the languages I would like to learn, to learn higher maths and physics and chemistry and the other sciences, to learn and master drawing and painting and gardening and woodcarving, to become proficient with various musical instruments and various musical styles, to write all the facts and fiction I would like to write, to play all the games I would like to play, to pay attention to the interesting people in this world.

I am not even thinking of the things that would be outside my reach today for financial reasons or health reasons, like traveling to exotic locales or owning a large estate, things that I suppose could have been possible if I had lived an alternate life starting in my younger days.

Far less am I thinking of things that are outside my biological range, like having an IQ of 180 or the strength of a top athlete, never mind wings and breasts. No, right here, right now, this life has such an overflowing abundance of interesting things, easily within my grasp as I am today, except for this one thing: Time.

I remember boredom, I remember loneliness, I even remember envy; but dimly, as something that happened a long time ago, just slightly more real than something read in a favorite childhood book.

I have been told that there are adults, even in the rich world, who have a reasonably healthy body and mind and do not feel this overwhelming anti-boredom, this love for life, a gratitude for being allowed to live, for being born into this world, this time. But I believe this is the human birthright. We may have to go some distance to claim it, but if it was given to me, then surely any normal person can also have it.

You may think of my feelings and attitude as the polar opposite of a suicidal person. It is an irony that if you hate life, you can easily end it; but no matter how much you love life, you cannot live forever in this world. Oh, if only those who do not want their lives could give them to me! But that is not how the world works. Well, I suppose they could donate their organs, but peculiarly this seems to be the thing least on their minds when they choose the time and place of their exit.

***

 It is a wonderful life, but it is also kind of useless from a higher perspective. I mean, even if I had all those bodies and could do all those things, it would still mostly be for my own enjoyment, and in the end there is nothing left of that, like a stone that slowly sinks into a clear pond and is gone, barely even making a ripple as it passes. Or like a star burning out in the void far from any eye that might have seen it. No matter how bright, it is still passing away in nothingness.

A better man than me – though some feminists may disagree – listed a number of impressive things one could do, and then added: “… but if I don’t have love, I am nothing.” Specifically we here mean the love that gives. The problem was not receiving love, but giving it. No matter how brightly we burn, it still comes down to this in the end.

To enjoy life is great, and I am grateful for it. But it is not my ultimate goal or highest aspiration.