Mark Twain was a genius. A brilliant writer. An insightful thinker. A master humorist. Clever beyond measure.
But this statement is nonsense. These are words written by a man who presumably had many days left to live.
Yes, it’s true. I was also dead for billions upon billions of years before I was born and didn’t experience an ounce of consternation during that time, but I also didn’t know what I was missing. I had not been made aware of the wondrous nature of life. The beauty of existence. The daily joy I feel in moving through this world.
Before I was born, I didn’t know love, laughter, and The Simpsons. I had not yet fallen in love with Elysha, my children, and the New England Patriots. I had not experienced a perfect autumn day in New England, a languid July afternoon at the beach, and the quiet of Christmas morning, just before the children come tumbling down the stairs to turn presents into things that need to be put away.
I had not yet tasted a cheeseburger, listened to Springsteen, or watched a golf ball drop into the cup.
Before I was born, I did not know the feel of an audience’s energy as I perform onstage, the thrill of seeing one of my books on a shelf in a bookstore, or the wide-eyed look of astonishment when a 10-year-old student suddenly understands something for the first time.
You cannot suffer the loss of something you never had.
But now that I’ve had so very much, I cannot bear the thought of it all disappearing one day.
It’s why I’m unable, from time to time, to hold back the imposing darkness of my everpresent, relentless existential crisis and dissolve into a quaking pile of hopeless, terrified goo.
Twain was right about most things, but not about this one.
Twain died of a heart attack in 1910. I can’t help but wonder if he was quite so sanguine in his last moments on this Earth.
