3 min read

33 - Unknowables

It seems strange to me now to think about how I have to unlearn how I lived in my 20s to really live now.

As cool as it would have been turning 33 on 11/11/11, I suppose it will be just as meaningful happening on 11/11/12. I was re-reading through last year’s birthday post earlier in the week, reflecting on what I would like to write this year. Oddly, I didn’t write on my birthdays before last year, so this is a new trend that is starting.

The cliche thing to do would be to write about “33 Things You Don’t Know About Me” or “33 Life Lessons I Have Learned Through the Year,” but I am never one to fit in with the popular trends. While thinking more about how I have been unlearning things about life to enjoy life more the past few years, I came to the realization of how much more meaningful it is to have those mysteries in life, those things you simply can’t know about.

Growing up, I devoured books to learn as much as I could. Now, it’s devouring things on the internet through searches, watching YouTube videos, and constantly consuming. Even with as much information I have been swallowing up, there are still things I will never know about and now I never want to know about them.

The 33 Unknowables
1. The thoughts and emotions that went through my ancestors’ minds when they boarded ships to leave Europe for the United States.
2. What it feels like to fall from space and surpass the speed of sound.
3. What the view is like from the tallest peaks of the world.
4. What the horses down the road think about when they gaze out at me and my daughter walking past.
5. Which man was responsible for putting hot dogs within pizza crust.
6. Whether the current generation of pre-teenagers are going to think of Justin Bieber as their generation’s Kurt Cobain.
7. What the woman posing for Leonardo da Vinci was thinking when he painted the Mona Lisa.
8. What the great minds of the past would think of life today.
9. What normal person today is going to have their journals and writing discovered 100+ years from now and become well-known.
10. What life would have been like if I never left Regina for Syracuse, or stayed in Syracuse another year.
11. What is going on in our minds when we are first born.
12. What Steve Jobs was experiencing when his final words were, “Wow.”
13. Why it is so difficult to let things go from the past.
14. How many hearts my daughter will break with her glances and smiles down the road.
15. What stories I am missing by not keeping in touch with friends and family like I wish I could.
16. How inspirational the classics truly are or all the books lining my shelves.
17. Knowing what it’s like to see a ball game in some of the historical fields of the past (Polo Grounds, Tiger Stadium, Comiskey).
18. What it’s like to hit a home run, hit a hole in one, swim in the Olympics or run an ultra marathon.
19. What technological advances will happen at the end of my daughter’s life and her children’s.
20. Whether Shakespeare felt love in different ways than the rest and how he showed it to his wife.
21. What our world was really like before populations exploded and the amount of life was depleted.
22. Who the original bitch was (the person on the receiving end of the phrase) and what they did to deserve it.
23. What my life would be like if I stayed in theatre.
24. What my life would be like without an easy source to write (i.e. before writing was general knowledge).
25. What percentage of the world’s population find themselves laying in bed at night thinking about life.
26. How many delicacies of the world I’m missing out on now and will never get to taste.
27. Whether my insatiable curiosity is nurtured from birth or whether it is there at birth.
28. How many people read this site and enjoy it.
29. What my daughter will think 20-30 years from now when she reads the archives or whether she will be able to.
30. What people far in the future will think of us sharing images of cats, images with huge captions written across them, or people dancing to Gangnam Style.
31. Whether I will look through the thousands of pictures I have in the future and remember the details as clearly as my grandparents do now while in their 80s.
32. Why my daughter refuses to sleep during the times I want her to but finds a way to doze off when I don’t want her to.
33. What my daughter is thinking when she is smiling at me.

A lengthy list. One that will surely grow as I grow older and give up trying to learn/experience everything that I can.

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