C is for Circle of Life.

When I bought my car, one of the most exciting features was its ten CD stacker thing. 10 CDs! I could drive all the way to Wellington and not have to faff with the stereo. Oh, the excitement. I got home, made 10 CDs, and trotted out to load them into my boot.

It doesn't work.

At first, I found this significantly upsetting. When I found out the stereo didn't get FM radio, one could almost say I despaired, in an utterly first-world sort of way. I recovered, slightly, after stumbling across the  absurd joys of talkback radio. Then one weekend, I went op-shopping with the bestie, and I found tapes. But not just any tapes.

The first tape I found was Billy Joel, who I have written about previously. The second was a Beatles best-of, which fills me with lovely memories about my first little road trip with someone a bit wonderful. But the third? The third, spotted by bestie on a high shelf, is the most special of all.

It's The Lion King soundtrack.

You know, how some days, your mind is just in a slightly different place to where it usually lives? You hear and see things differently, experience the world a little to the left of where it was yesterday. I have watched The Lion King more times than I can count on my fingers (and possibly also my toes), and I have listened to that tape four or five times since it was purchased: singing along heartily every time, may I needlessly add. But today, for the first time, I heard something.

There's more to be seen than can ever be seen

More to do than can ever be done

When the truthfulness of this statement (finally, finally, after decades of exposure) hit me, I damn near had a panic attack. My heart literally skipped a beat and I felt instantly sick to my stomach. Because it's true. It's true. I won't get to do everything.

People laugh at me because I am already planning - and I mean planning planning - a trip to Europe in 2014. But that's the soonest that I'll have enough money to go, and I need to know that I am going. I need to know when I'll next be seeing, doing, being something new. And that was before I heard the song. Now I'm in quite a state.

There's so much I'm going to miss. I will not stand on every beach, hear every language, see every star or taste every food. Even if I go, now, just leave and never come back, I will miss things (mostly because I will run out of money a month in and end up stuck living in a backpackers in Perth, not looking at anyone in particular). Isn't that just terrifying?

There is no thoughtful resolution here. I am simply terrified. Terrified of what I will miss. What if the thing I would have loved most, I never do?