Overheard Starbuck

"I should've been dead years ago."
---"Divine intervention?"
"Maybe. Or maybe I simply zigged instead of zagged."
---"You were smoking pot back then?"
"No. no. ...For years I kept on remembering this one summer during which I worked harder then ever before or since on this monster task. ... And slowly over time I've realized had I been successful I would've been lead to a very different world and a guaranteed early exit."
---"How could you know that?"
"Hindsite is 20/20. I just do."
---"Ok, let's say you survived past your time. You cheated death; you outfoxed fate. What are you doing with your double-golden overtime that you couldn't have done during a sweet short life?"
"That's it. I'm not sure. Although for example, lately for the first time In my life I've been experiencing what it feels like to be completely physically present in my body. Something I've never known before."
---"Good for you?"
"I've always been kind-of a floater, on a long tether. I guess it took my soul a number of years to grow into my body...I would've missed that and who knows how many other similar experiences had I took the low road."
---"You're saying you appreciate the extra time you've been given."
"It's more than that. I'm saying if I'm not that dead man who bungled an opportunity of a lifetime, albeit a short one, who am I? Who have I become? ... And more puzzling is it the passing of time that makes all the difference, alters us in ways no one, not even God can predict?"
---"Ok so you've been improvising all this time. Who knew? Who cares?"
"Isn't it strange how the stories of our lives are pale shadows of our experiences. ... That what's biographical is the graffiti of life?"
---"'Veni, vidi, vici.'"
"What?"
---"'I came, I saw, I conquered'. Or for players it's 'Vidi, Vici, Veni': "I saw, I conquered, I came'."