No matter how optimized, healthy, and productive I am, I simply will not become more or better forever, which means there are things I will never do and never be. Just like this book, which could have been anything when I started it, my life will take some paths and not others—and then it will end, the thread pulled out of the ball, with no witch to indulge me by taking it back. Realizing that I cannot be everything is in one sense incredibly freeing: It means I am not responsible for being everything. Yet the fact that life ends, for anyone who enjoys being alive and in the world, is also
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