When the Arc Turns Downward

On pickleball, physical decline, and the hard grace of learning to step down.

 

On the pickleball court, stepping down the ladder of proficiency due to aging is a bitter pill to swallow. It is not merely giving up a court rating; it is signing a quiet concession to mortality.

 Arun Kumar

 

A missed return—a soft, looping ball that an expert might once have put away with an effortless flick of the wrist—snaps into the white tape at the top of the net and dies. Across the line, the gentleman stops in his track. A sudden, sharp disgust washes over his face. He curses at himself, and in a fleeting flash of fury, hurls his paddle to the hardcourt. It skips, clattering and skittering ten feet away before settling into silence. No one is hurt, save for the quiet dignity of the man who threw it.

In the sun-washed retirement community I call home, this scene is not an anomaly; it is a recurring motif. It is the predictable drama of physical decline—the story of a body slowly losing its light, and a mind that refuses the decline.

Imagine him a decade ago. Imagine, perhaps, that he was you.

You move into this community somewhere between sixty-five and seventy, newly unburdened by the morning commute, rich in the currency of unstructured time. There are morning stiffnesses, of course—joints that require a few extra moments to thaw—but overall, the spring in your step remains intact.

You join the local pickleball club. You learn the geometry of the court: the non-volley zone we call the kitchen, the delicate art of the dink, the rhythm of speeding the ball up only to reset its tempo, and the rhythmic, chant-like keeping of score.

In those early years, progress comes easily. You master the third-shot drop to unpin yourself from the baseline. You learn to place the ball where opponents aren't. As with any craft, the initial ascent is steep and thrilling. You climb the ladder, leaving behind the hesitant beginners to trade rallies with the community’s best. Occasionally, you carry home a small tournament victory—a shiny medal confirming that, even in life's twilight, you still possess mastery.

Then, imperceptibly at first, time begins its quiet erosion.

Years pass. The rate of improvement flattens, then tilts downward. Strange, unsettling glitches creep into your muscle memory. Easy returns begin go wide or catch the net. Your feet feel subtly anchored to the asphalt; that extra split-second required to reach a drop shot stretches into an insurmountable distance. You watch newer, younger retirees climbing up the ladder like you did once. They seem effortless in movements that now cost you all the effort.

You realize, with a heavy heart, that to keep the game joyful for yourself and fair to others, you must begin the descent. But stepping down is a bitter pill to swallow. It is not merely giving up a pickleball rating; it is also accepting a quiet concession to mortality.

It is during this downward journey that the inner wires short-circuit. Anger at one’s fading reflexes bubbles to the surface. Without mindfulness, one becomes a walking monument to a body in retreat and a mind in denial—the player who curses himself, who hurls the paddle across the court in a tragic, futile protest against time.

I am still on my way up the ladder. But I cross paths with those on their way down. I have stood as a silent witness to their grief and watched their fury.

I know, with absolute certainty, that one day my turn will come. One day, the young player eyeing me across the net will be on their ascent, and I will be the one struggling to keep my footing on the way down.

When that day arrives, I hope to hold in my mind the image of a stone thrown—how it traces a graceful parabolic arc, reaches its peak with quiet poise, and begins its inevitable return to the earth. I hope to remember that whatever goes up must eventually bow to gravity. And when my own physical arc turns downward, I hope I meet it not with thrown paddles or bitter curses, but with the quiet, lingering grace of someone who is simply grateful to still be out on the court, playing the game.

Ciao, and thanks for reading.

 

Quantum Exhaustion

Make a choice—

the trajectory of the universe

bifurcates.

How is it possible

for anyone to keep tally

of ever-multiplying

worlds?

No wonder

we are in such a

sad shape.

 

Running on Empty

Old age
is not unlike a car
running on empty—
the needle hovering.

You never know
when the engine will sputter

and stop humming.

 

Why I Walk Two Miles to Avoid Taking the Bus

How a confusing bus ride in Germany revealed my lifelong habit of walking to escape public awkwardness.

Embarrassment is the price of admission for a life fully lived.” — Susan David

Arun Kumar

The morning air in Bonn was brisk enough to justify a coat, but not cold enough to excuse the sudden warmth rising up the back of my neck.

I was standing near the front of a crowded bus, suspended in a peculiar mental state known only to foreigners. In my right hand, I held a crumpled five-euro note, extended like a peace offering toward the bus driver who looked through me with the clinical indifference reserved for tourist. With a slow, practiced flick of his wrist, he pointed toward the back of the bus. No words. None were deemed necessary. Whether he spoke English or simply preferred the modest power of withholding it, the message was clear: Move along and go the ticket machine at the back.

I turned and began the unsteady trek down the aisle. The bus lurched forward, forcing me into a precarious dance, bracing against handrails to avoid tumbling into the lap of some unsuspecting commuter reading the morning news. When I finally reached the ticket machine, another trial began.

The interface stared back at me in German, a language whose long, compound nouns look remarkably official. I fumbled for the language toggle, hyper-aware of the quiet, captive audience around me. When English finally appeared, it brought no relief — only a bewildering array of transit options. Single journey? Short trip? City zone? Day pass?

I tapped the screen, tapped it again, waved my credit card against the reader, and prayed for the gentle hum of a printing ticket rather than the harsh beep of rejection.

                                                           *  *  * 

If the distance between my hotel and a meeting is two miles or less, I will almost always choose to walk. It takes about forty-five minutes; a duration I have spent years rationalizing. It’s good for my health, I would tell myself. It offers time for contemplation.

Never mind that half of these walks take place along six-lane arterial roads, where “contemplation” consists primarily of walking through exhaust fumes and listening to truck horns. The narrative was comforting because it framed my choice as intentional, healthy, and high-minded.

It was only there in Germany, balanced on one foot against the momentum of a lurching bus, that the self-deception fell away and clarity emerged.

I was not walking for fitness. I was walking to escape stage fright.

Taking a bus in an unfamiliar city is not merely transportation; it is an unexpected, unscripted five-minute performance in front of an audience. You step onto a brightly lit stage, surrounded by seated spectators. Every hesitation — searching for the machine, staring in bafflement at the fare structure — becomes a spotlight.

                                                           *  *  * 

A while back, I wrote about this same phenomenon: the extraordinary lengths we go to in order to avoid public embarrassment. At the time, I wondered if this sensitivity is rooted in something far older.

In early human history, falling out of favor with the group was rarely a minor inconvenience — it was a threat to survival. To be noticed for the wrong reasons was to risk isolation. Perhaps our nervous systems still carry that primal memory, mistaking the quiet scrutiny of morning commuters for the quiet judgment of the tribe. The pulse spikes not because the ticket machine is complex (which it is), but because our biology still reads public awkwardness as a matter of life and death.

Go figure.

                                                           *  *  * 

Yet, the irony of stage fright is also how quickly the stage dissolves.

On my second morning in Bonn, I stepped through the bus doors with a different rhythm. I walked straight to the machine, swiped the card without looking for the English toggle, retrieved the ticket, and slid into an empty seat near the window. The audience hadn’t changed, but the feeling of being in spotlight was gone. I was no longer an actor in a play; I was just another passenger watching the morning traffic on streets of Bonn, on my way to a meeting.

Ciao, and thanks for reading.