The Paradoxes of Life: Part II — The Paradox of Mortality

Exploring the tension between our fear of vanishing and our longing to live forever, and the possibility of peace in accepting both.

 

A paradox is a landscape where two opposing truths exist simultaneously, both entirely real.

Arun Kumar

 

In a previous post, I reflected on a paradox I live with daily: the urge to check the analytics and metrics of my online writing, set against the undeniable backdrop of my own mortality. If I know my time on Earth is finite, and if reason and evidence convince me that death is a final vanishing, there is no logical reason to crave these fleeting signals of recognition. Yet evolutionary survival strategies have imprinted a subliminal drive within me to be seen, counted, and acknowledged. And so, sitting at my laptop, I am suddenly overtaken by the impulse to refresh a page, seeking evidence that I exist in the minds of others.

This is merely one among many paradoxes we shoulder. We carry the paradox of existence, of prospection and retrospection, of the next achievement… and the list continues to unfold. These contradictions are not always obvious, which makes peering into their depths so compelling.

Let us begin with the Paradox of Mortality. But first, a word on paradox itself.

A paradox is a landscape where two opposing truths exist simultaneously, both entirely real. The primal urge for recognition lives side-by-side with the knowledge that, in the end, all gathered acclaim dissolves into dust. While our biological wiring commands us to seek validation to secure our place in the tribe, our reflective mind knows better. Living with the friction of these two truths constantly grinding against one another generates a quiet, persistent weariness.

With that preamble, let us step into the paradox of mortality.

We know, with absolute certainty, that we cannot evade the finitude of our existence. We witness it everywhere. We have held the hands of loved ones as they slipped away. We see the rhythm of birth and decay written into the fabric of the natural world. We watch exuberant puppies grow into dogs with rich personalities, only to observe their gentle decline into a final season where they rest in a favorite spot, watching the world drift by with quiet, darting eyes, untroubled by the need to move.

And yet, despite all this evidence, we harbor a wish to be immortal, to endure forever—even if we rarely pause to consider what eternal existence would truly mean. The thought of the self dissolving into absolute nothingness, taking with it every sacrifice, every quiet triumph, every love, and every hard-won lesson, feels terrifying.

The Paradox of Mortality is this exact inner tension: carrying the knowledge of our impending finitude while clinging to the longing to live forever in some form.

Like all paradoxes, this one creates an internal friction begging for resolution. To resolve it, we must tinker with its opposing poles—either bringing them into harmony or attempting to eliminate one entirely.

Since mortality holds its ground with absolute firmness (at least for now), humanity’s primary strategy has been to alter the other side of the equation: finding ways to outlive the physical form. To do that, we have built elaborate social, cultural, and spiritual structures.

The Promise of the Afterlife

To soften the finality of the grave, we envisioned realms beyond. Across cultures and eras, human imagination sculpted heavens, paradises, and astral planes where the spirit sheds its earthly frailty and steps into eternity. In this narrative, death is not an ending at all, but a threshold—a corridor leading to something enduring. We turned biological death into a mere transition, reassuring ourselves that our stories do not end when our breath falters.

The Pursuit of Legacy

For those who look upon the skies with skepticism, the pursuit of immortality took a more tangible form: the monument of legacy. We build empires, write books, and carve our names into bronze, marble, or tree trunks. We invest in children, creative works, and lasting institutions, hoping to leave a thumbprint on the world. Legacy is our secular altar—a calculated gamble that if our ideas, lineage, or creations endure in cultural memory, a part of us remains alive.

The Cycle of Rebirth

In other traditions, the terror of singular annihilation dissolved into the vast rhythm of cosmic return. Through reincarnation and the transmigration of souls, life became an endless river. Death, in this view, is simply the turning of a wheel—a shedding of worn-out garments so the soul may return, refined and renewed, to continue its journey. By embedding the self into the eternal heartbeat of creation, the finality of death vanishes, replaced by the assurance of another beginning.

Yet there is another path—one that does not strive for promises beyond.

It is the path of accepting mortality as an unadorned fact: relinquishing the desperate urge to live forever and shaping a life in alignment with our fleeting nature, untroubled by the desire to leave a trace.

For many, this approach is the only logical conclusion, supported by the grand narrative of the universe itself. In the vast arc of cosmic history, a few foundational physical laws were sufficient to set the universe and the emergence of life into motion, without requiring a predetermined blueprint or a final destination. We are, in all likelihood, the result of chemistry, time, and chance happenstance.

We hold no privileged status in the cosmos; the universe is indifferent to our presence or absence. Recognizing that a slight turn in an evolutionary trajectory would have meant our non-existence does not diminish us; rather, it grounds us in our finitude. Once we accept this, we no longer need elaborate architectures of belief that require constant infusions of faith to remain standing.

Perhaps this is the more authentic way to live.

In the end, we all confront the mortality paradox. We can try to quiet the tension by weaving winding narratives of endurance, or we can embrace the truth that we are brief sparks in a vast and silent night—special not because we last forever, but because we are here now to experience it. In that quiet acceptance, we can find peace, building an ethics, a morality, and a life that honors the just passing through.

Ciao, and thanks for reading.

 

An Odometer for the Body

Sunday morning over Earl Grey tea, I update a spreadsheet that counts down my remaining days. Here is what lies behind the arithmetic.

 

Mortality, for all its existential angst, is usually a background hum.

 Arun Kumar

 

The weather on June 12, 2022, is completely unremembered, lost to the quiet passage of an ordinary Sunday. It could have been bright or muted; the sky leaves no permanent record in the mind unless anchored by a momentous event. I vividly remember the weather on 9/11, but about that particular June Sunday, nothing remains except a sudden, unprompted arithmetic.

It was a morning about a month after I turned sixty-four. For reasons I cannot explain, I found myself contemplating what might constitute a good—and reasonable—target for a lifespan. Eighty-eight felt like a natural horizon: twenty-four more years from where I stood. Not a grand declaration, but a definitive, workable boundary. And with that single arbitrary choice, a long-standing habit took root.

Every Sunday morning, beside a steaming cup of Earl Grey tea, I open a simple spreadsheet. Three columns keep the tally: the date, the days remaining until I reach eighty-eight, and the days I have inhabited since that first Sunday in June. I extend the fill-color down to the next row, then shift to Google Calendar to adjust the running totals—subtracting seven from what remains, adding seven to what has passed.

The spreadsheet is an odometer for the frame I inhabit. It tracks the mileage of a journey moving in only one direction.

Most weeks, the update happens without the weight of emotion. It carries neither the ache of regret for a week spent nor a dramatic surge of relief for another seven days secured. Mortality, for all its existential angst, is usually a background hum. The immediate work of living—navigating the present, keeping afloat, attending to the administrative overhead of daily existence—easily crowds out the quiet reality that the road eventually ends.

Yet, there are mornings when the numbers register with a sudden clarity. When the counter crosses a major threshold—moving from 8,000 to 7,999 days, or when the hundreds digit rolls over from 7,600 to 7,599—the odometer clicks loudly enough to draw attention. In those moments, the shrinking distance to the target feels undeniably real.

I find myself wondering about the milestones further down the road. What will it feel like to cross the boundary of 1,000 days and enter the territory of three digits—999? Will something shift in the psyche—a sudden urgency to inhabit each moment more deliberately, or simply a deep, settled thankfulness for having made it that far? Or perhaps, by then, the slow erosion of body and mind will have taken away the impulse to count at all, leaving the spreadsheet as a forgotten relic of an earlier self.

In the trajectory of any life, however, there always hides a random variable. The journey could end early—in the quiet dark of sleep without awareness, or through declining health with the sharp realization that the target will remain out of reach. Conversely, if I cross past eighty-eight, the remaining days will dip into negative numbers, converting the ledger into a tally of bonus time lived beyond the original allowance I set for myself.

Outside, it is a crisp autumn morning. The sky is a hard, clear blue with the subtle edge of coming winter, carrying that familiar autumnal nostalgia for time slipping by. It is Sunday again. The aroma of Earl Grey rises from the cup. The spreadsheet waits for its update. Another week has slipped into the tally, and I am still here to watch the numbers roll over.

Ciao, and thanks for reading.

 

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.