A few days ago, I came across a pretty sad fact.

According to Google, there’s about 130 million books in existence. And that was written in 2010, so now the number’s probably close to 150 million. And there’s an unimaginable number of books that have been lost into the cosmos, so the real number is probably way higher.

Suppose some brilliant person reads one book a day for 100 years. That person will read 36,525 books. Which is impossible, because firstly nobody reads a book a day, and secondly you only start reading when you’re 6 or 7. But even this fictional person will read less than 0.03% of all the books in the world (assuming 130 million in existence, which is a low estimate).

So that’s why I’m a little sad. There are so many books in the world that I’ll never read; in fact, I’ll probably read less than 0.001% of all the books out there. How many beautiful ideas, poetry and stories will I never know in this life? The thought is heartbreaking.

And this is just books – let us not forget places, people and activities that will pass us by.

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows has a word on this: Onism. It’s defined as:

n. the frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time, which is like standing in front of the departures screen at an airport, flickering over with strange place names like other people’s passwords, each representing one more thing you’ll never get to see before you die—and all because, as the arrow on the map helpfully points out, you are here.