Offered the image of a fairy godmother's magic wand giving me the life I would want to have had, I decided to take up the challenge.
I wish I could look back on a life of accomplishment. The dictionary tells me that accomplishment means bringing something to completion, doing so successfully to the point it is an achievement or having acquired a skill or expertise.
Thinking about it, I did none of the three. Sure, I have brought to completion some repetitive or routine tasks. I have bathed and eaten to completion.
I have written an article to completion (or have I?); for the many years I was my own chief editor I may have thought the article was complete, but it wasn't. No one told me otherwise; indeed, so few people have ever commented on anything I have written that I might as well never have written anything. Maybe nobody read anything I wrote.
I have attempted novels that turned out to be terrible and meaningless. I have written a family history its intended readers could not bring themselves to read. I have been writing a book on Christianity I realize I am morally and academically unqualified to even attempt. Aquinas called his work "straw" at the end of his life; I have written nothing worth a comma in the Summa Theologica.
I would have liked, also, to have done some tangible good. I can think of endless things I have done that were plain wrong, morally or practically. I can point to nothing I did that is a good I performed. Oh, sure, I spawned two children who are fine grown men, thanks to their sane mother. I may have gotten up in a crowded bus to give an elderly lady a seat. I gave street beggars money. I assure you, I am no Albert Schweitzer bringing modern medicine to the hinterlands of Africa.
I would have liked not to have my many character flaws, including my temper and my depression. People might be drawn to me, as I see them drawn to others. Instead I repel almost everyone.
I could wish to have skipped many misadventures but that would make me even more pointless, useless and selfish. What if I achieved nothing and did no good after an idyllic childhood, instead of my own? At least I can fall back on plain bad luck, to some extent (I did not live in a Calcutta slum, so I can't call myself that unlucky, either).
The terrible thing is that I am of an age in which my capacities are waning and nothing awaits me but death. I am not going to make up for a useless, pointless, selfish and disagreeable life ever. My chances are all gone.
I would gladly have stepped in the path of those bullets at the school in Florida or Connecticut or wherever. My death in place of that of promising children might at least have had some redeemable value.
