When a child, I learned the sun would eventually wither and die; it has a lifespan like everything else in my experience. This knowledge filled me with a cobwebby fear. Sticky. Enveloping. And infused me with a pre-adolescent sense of superiority. (I know something horrible you don't...) A snot-nosed kid suddenly kin to Nostradamus.

I recently learned that long before the sun expands to nothingness, it will barbecue our planet to a cinder, well beyond any kind of survivability. This set my doomsday clock forward a couple billion years. Why should this still inconceivably distant event prick me, once again, with dread? Inexplicably, it does.

At least I no longer feel superior.

4/15/21