and in a weird way I guess I was grateful for being born in this precise century, at this specific point on this infinite chronological timeline. I'm grateful to be able to sit in a stuffy classroom and learn about things that people who were born years and decades and centuries ago were brilliant enough to discover, so generations after them could have less to do. grateful that mankind had made so much progress in trying to decipher the whole load of unknown -- the vast expanse of obscurity -- to understand it all. nobody HAD to classify every living thing. nobody was assigned to explore the world and name every nook and cranny on this planet. it's just the way people are: they wake up and wonder, "what's this strange thing over here?" or "why is the sky blue?" and instead of being overwhelmed by the immensity of everything, they go out and make guesses. great things tend to happen when you have enough courage to make a guess, even if someone else down the line might prove you wrong.