Eighteen years ago my mother and father were both riding down a street in Fullerton on their bicycles. I, being only 17 and a half, was not born, but my mother was quite pregnant. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, some guy came flying down the street in a truck and struck my mom, sending her flying off of her bike.

As far as I know, she only broke a leg that day. But what if that man had been going just a smidgeon faster? Or maybe if his truck had been a foot further down one side of the road? What if he hit my mom square in the belly, what if I had died before being born? Think of it, so many things would be different in the world today. What would my parents have done? Would they even have tried with my brother? Undoubtedly he would not exist, because his entity is a collection of memories of a family in which I exist. What about my friends? Not my superficial high school ones that will forget me in a couple of years, but the ones I have truly touched? What about the people I have driven from suicide, or pushed closer to it.

You know what I think the poorest man's affirmation is? The world without him. I think you're life is worth it if you can merely look back and see a world different for the worse without you. I also think that nobody ever had the right to complain about lives small things. Nobody has the right to say "I got a 89.49999 but not an 'A'; how unfair". Whether it's god or luck or your own incompetence, the fact of the matter is that you did get that score, and you will have to live with it.

I guess where I'm heading right now is into the whole "dont regret because it's bad" thing, so I'll stop now.