I'd never looked down the barrel of a gun before, but everything you've heard about the experience is true.
I am not young enough to know everything.
We learn something every day, and lots of times it's that what we learned the day before was wrong.
I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less.
The pain of making the necessary sacrifices always hurts more than you think it's going to. I know. It sucks. That being said, doing something seriously creative is one of the most amazing experiences one can have, in this or any other lifetime. If you can pull it off, it's worth it. Even if you don't end up pulling it off, you'll learn many incredible, magical, valuable things. It's NOT doing it when you know you full well you HAD the opportunity- that hurts FAR more than any failure.
The crux... is that the vast majority of the mass of the universe seems to be missing.