According to Richard Dawkins my inevitable death makes me one of the lucky ones. I and everyone else who managed, against all odds, to come into existence, we the exceedingly improbable ones, members of the tiny subset of all possible people, should feel a tremor of gratitude at our good fortune, privileged as we are to shiver in death's shadow without a sweater until the blade drops with a steely whoosh. I used to think yoga practitioners were impossible people but it turns out there is a more scientific definition. Impossible people would include people without bodies, people whose sweet faces are made of packets of refined table sugar, that is to say any people who could never exist even in principle, whereas potential people would be everyone who might exist but doesn't, and then there's you and me, potential people who became actual people, the fortunate few who beat the house and whose net winnings after taxes are unrelenting nervousness, dry skin, and the promise of a return to oblivion. We're people, here we are. Who says I never lived up to my potential? Merely existing is achievement enough. I am taking a quick reading of the rationalization meter and this could be a brand new low. Just talking about existing is a little tiring. I'm going to go sit on the recliner before I finish writing this. To recline is also to exist. I might fall asleep, it's pretty comfortable.

So I am one of the lucky few, one of the actually existing, plucked from the eerie mist-covered pool of mere potentialities, those hazy underachievers. I actually do feel lucky. No matter what you feel about life there is a lot to experience. Machu Picchu, rapturous love from someone who doesn't embarrass you, that deal where you get dragged through the water between two dolphins. I'm sure there are other things too.

I am lucky to exist but all good fortune has a flipside, a damp stain with a sour, vinegary odor. For example, being alive drastically increases my chances of contracting multiple sclerosis. Richard Dawkins speaks of the never-born poets greater than Keats, the possible but nonexistent scientists greater than Newton. Sure, let the potential people have all the glamorous resumes, while we lucky ones, the ones who really exist, what do we get? I'm here and clearly I'm not greater than Keats or Newton, I am in fact painfully inferior to Keats and Newton, but I might yet come down with multiple sclerosis. Why doesn't Dawkins talk about all the potential but nonexistent people with multiple sclerosis? There's certainly something prosaic about one's story once existence is obtained. Then there's that whole thing where the first twenty years of your life sort of suck and it turns out they were the best ones. Well, I'm here so I might as well live. It would feel a little tacky to win the existence lottery like this then blow it all on the metaphysical equivalent of hookers and cocaine. I owe it to all the poor ghosts in the misty pool, all they get to do is sit around being greater than Keats and Newton. I am here to testify, like anybody, to bear witness, possibly to serve as a grimly hilarious cautionary tale. What is it like to be alive? What is it like to eat cheese while reclining? I just want to live long enough to recant my entire story.