It’s nearly three in the morning here, the rain a constant, dull percussion against the windowpane, as it always is in this city… always has been, for decades now. I’m looking at a travel brochure for some place with turquoise water and actual sunshine, a place I saw advertised on the telly, I suppose. And it got me thinking, really thinking, about the road not taken. Am I the only one who still does this? At 76, you’d think one would have achieved some semblance of peace, a kind of acceptance regarding one’s life trajectory. But no… not entirely, not for me. I remember, vividly, a moment in my early twenties. Just after my last tour, still… raw, I suppose is the word. Disoriented by civilian life, by the quiet, by the lack of immediate, tangible purpose. I was a software engineer even then, though the machines were gargantuan beasts compared to what fits in your pocket now. And I remember seeing an advertisement for a very different kind of life… something abroad, something… less structured, less predictable. A missionary, maybe. Or an aid worker. Something that demanded a different sort of courage, a different kind of discipline than the one instilled in me by the Corps. It was a fleeting thought, a momentary glimpse into an alternative self, before the inertia of my existing path — the steady job, the predictable salary, the quiet house in the perpetual damp — asserted its dominance. I attributed it, at the time, to a post-traumatic stress reaction, a flight impulse, a maladaptive coping mechanism. A transient, almost pathological desire for novelty. But now… now, staring at this glossy picture of a sun-drenched beach, I wonder if it wasn't something more fundamental. A genuine divergence in potential. A path that might have led to… what? A different kind of contentment? Or perhaps a different set of regrets. The logical part of me, the part that built systems and anticipated failure modes, knows that such speculation is futile, even counterproductive. But the other part, the part that feels the ache of the years, the weight of the choices made and unmade… it still wonders. What if I had simply… gone? Cut ties, bought a one-way ticket, and embraced the chaos? Would I have found a different kind of meaning, a different sense of belonging, away from the hum of servers and the endless drizzle? Does anyone else carry these phantom versions of themselves through their whole lives? These lives that could have been?