Here are ten things I will never be able to do in this lifetime:
- Be a member of a sorority
- Be a child prodigy
- Fully understand what it's like to be non-white / non-male
- Grow up in a single parent home
- Meet Richard Feynman, or any of the notable heroes in my life who have already passed on
- Live my entire life outside of Earth
- Play little league baseball (not that I particularly care, either)
- Be crowned King of the British Empire
- Fly though the air with just the power of my mind
- Exist solely as a one-dimensional being
Funny enough, there are things that are highly unlikely, but not impossible:
- Be called on by the BBC to play The Doctor in Doctor Who
- Act as the understudy for Neal Peart on tour
- Resolve the Middle East Conflicts with lasting peace
- Dig a hole to China in my back yard
- Play Ping Pong with Stephen Hawking
- Put Groucho Marx glasses on the Sphinx
- Be able to watch a broadway musical without a barf bag
- Climb a space elevator to the moon
- Watch a shuttle mission take-off in person
- Stop an asteroid from hitting the Earth with my bare hands
It's interesting that the unlikely list filled out faster than the impossible list.
How many of the items on my impossible list are things that happened to me in the past, and are only made impossible because we can't (yet) travel back in time, or live our lives differently? I'm even dubious of the impossible "Fly though the air with just the power of my mind". Maybe some day we'll uncover something that will allow us to harness some as-yet-untapped levation power of the human being. Extremely unlikely? Heck yes. Impossible? I'm not so sure.
What's unlikely in your life? What would need to change to make it more possible?