I was once asked by a much younger man if I felt that I had ever accomplished anything in my life. It was of course an insult. But since it was at least an interesting insult, and bearing in mind how mind-blowingly boring the social function at which this was asked had been up to then, I thought I really should try to answer. Earnestly.

Because I have loved so strong I felt my skin was fire, my ribcage exploding outward like a mad screaming super nova. I have spent a midsummers night on a beach with a girl I loved and walked home, hand in hand, through empty city streets in the first sunlight of that first morning. I have betrayed and I have been betrayed. I have seen the pain inflicted on another person’s face and known that only I was ever to be blamed. I have been so close to another human that I felt we shared the same thoughts. And I have seen that same person walk away, saying I was incomprehensible to her.

And I have seen. Oh my God the things I've seen.
Hammerhead sharks circle in their hundreds above me deep down in a blue ocean. People small as specks of dust, soaring high up under a blazing Spanish sun with nothing but a thin cloth and a thousand lines to keep me there, chasing the raising bubbles of air to let me fly, just a little longer. And I have learnt things I never even thought was there to be learnt. About myself, about the world, about life. I have been forever curios, and that has been all I ever needed.

And I have toiled and cried and thought it better if I died. And I have risen from that darkness a little wiser every time.

But this, of course, I never said. It would have sounded like an old man’s last grasp at glory. And in essence, that was most likely all it was.

So I answered "I have lived. And you might say that it is all I've ever done".