Hey, I'm a storyteller. Ask me a question, and I'll tell you a story.

My students keep telling me: Posch, you can never die.

Well, thanks, I accept the compliment. I've been around the maypole more than a few times, I'm good at what I do, and I know my stuff.

But I keep thinking about the poor seer who, when granted a boon by the gods, made the mistake of asking for eternal life. Unfortunately for her, they granted her request.

Alas, not even the wisest can see all ends.

Eternal life without eternal youth: who would want it?

Down the long years, she just got older and older, but she could never die. Eventually, she shriveled up like a cricket. Finally they hung her in a jug from the ceiling, and the little shits from the local village would come to the temple to taunt her.

“Seer, what do you want?” they would ask. “Seer, what do you want?”

Her answer was always the same.

“I just want to die,” she'd tell them.

So when they ask me (not entirely jestingly), How could we ever replace you? here's the story that I tell.

When composer George (Rhapsody in Blue) Gershwin was a young man, he went to Paris, then the center of the musical world, to study with Maurice Ravel.

For a year he studied with Maurice Ravel.

At the end of the year, Ravel told him: Well, Gershwin, you have two options.

Either you can stay here in Paris and become a second rate Maurice Ravel, or you can go back to New York and become a first rate George Gershwin.

Nobody needs another Steven Posch, especially not a second-rate one. One is quite bad enough, thank you very much.

No, dear students, your job is to become the very best you that you possibly can be. That way, we all come out ahead.

And it sure beats hanging from the ceiling in a jug.