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.

 

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.

 

My Mother's Script

I arrived on a sunny afternoon
from a land far away,

just as winter folded its quilts
to hibernate through summer.

The first days were pure joy—
tracing the new lines
on our aging faces.

Days marched to the scent
of her cooking
drifting into the night.

Then the halfway mark
quietly passed.

I caught her watching me
with forlorn eyes—

trying to frame me
in the folds of her mind
to hold me close.

On the final night,
a heavy silence fell.

Her vacant gaze held an emptiness
that would stretch across the ocean
until I returned.

This was her script—
replayed year after year
on her expectant face.

 

Why I Check My View Count in the Shadow of Mortality

On Terror Management Theory, evolutionary hardwiring, and the quiet obsession with digital echoes in retirement.

Deep down, I know an article’s impression score will not survive my death or matter when I am gone—for when I leave, I leave. Yet tracking the metric offers a momentary, artificial sense of expansion, significance, and presence while I am here.

Arun Kumar

We discussed how our ability to stitch together an extended temporal window, while an evolutionary advantage, also gave us an awareness of our own mortality. Further, although we never personally experience our own death, we do observe that all biological life forms eventually come to an end. These observations lead us to extrapolate that our own life will inevitably end as well, grounding the awareness of mortality in observed fact.

Somewhere deep inside, we also know that all the baggage and possessions we carry through life are ultimately left behind. Yet so much of how we live directly contradicts this awareness of mortality and its sweeping implications. The friction generated by the contradiction between what mortality means and how we carry ourselves leads to paradoxes of the human condition.

One such paradox is the desire to check the number of impressions, reactions, reads, and views on various online forums where I am active, even though none of them will matter when I cross the threshold of death.

The sequence follows a familiar playbook in the middle of a mundane afternoon: I hit "publish" on a piece I wrote purely for the quiet joy of writing. Being retired, there is no editor to answer to, no career ladder left to climb. An hour later, while making tea or watering a plant, a sudden cue fires in the mind. An idle thought drifts in: How many impressions has it received? Has the counter moved since I checked an hour ago?

In retirement, when the imperative to build a resume has dissolved and the awareness of finite time grows clearer, logic suggests I should feel a serene detachment from such urges. For me, social media and online platforms are meant to be an idle pastime, a shield against boredom, and a way to stay engaged. And yet, the sudden urge to refresh statistics persists.

What are the origins of this paradox and the urge to check the statistics related to my posts? How can I frame this tension between the awareness of mortality and trivial metrics?

In one perspective, this paradox owes its existence to the fact that the awareness of mortality gets overridden by the innate desire to win the evolutionary race, to procreate, to ensure our lineage, and to satisfy the deep psychological imperatives with which we are burdened.

Throughout our evolutionary history, survival depended on our standing within the tribe to which we belonged. Higher social status meant better access to resources, protection, and mates. The human brain was hardwired over millennia to seek social proof, visibility, and group recognition as proxies for safety and belonging. In the modern context, statistics counters are simply a digital translation of ancient urges. Every view, like, or read is interpreted deep in our brain as a nod of acceptance, reassuring us that I am still seen, still valued, and still safe within the village, even if that village is composed of invisible internet strangers.

Another answer lies in the neurochemistry of anticipation—the mechanics of the dopamine loop [Link1, Link2].

Dopamine is not primarily the reward chemical; it is the molecule of anticipation, driving the urge to search, forage, and discover. In an evolutionary sense, this mechanism kept early humans scanning the horizon for fruit or tracking signs of game, ensuring our ancestors stayed motivated in a harsh environment. In the world of digital feeds, the unpredictable reward structure—never knowing if refreshing the screen will yield one view or fifty—triggers the exact same loop. The mere act of checking offers a quick spike of anticipation, pulling me away from the abstraction of mortality and locking me into an immediate chemical sequence: a cue, followed by action, in anticipation of a reward.

But that is not all. I can also look at the same paradox through a few other lenses.

Although we intellectually recognize the finality of biological death, we compulsively seek digital, symbolic, or social permanence to buffer against that reality. Checking impressions is an indirect pursuit of the immortality project. In his seminal work on Terror Management Theory, Ernest Becker argued that human culture and individual achievement are largely subconscious mechanisms designed to defend against the existential terror of our own mortality. Deep down, I know an article’s impression score will not survive my death or matter when I am gone—for when I leave, I leave. Yet tracking the metric offers a momentary, artificial sense of expansion, significance, and presence while I am here. It is a tiny, quantifiable proof of impact that says: I was here, and I left a ripple.

The logical conclusion of knowing that metrics do not matter should be calm detachment. However, we default to chasing artificial scorecards to fill the quiet void of human existence.

And finally, mortality is distant; checking an impression count is immediate. The human mind consistently favors the immediate over the abstract, and the immediate feedback loop of the present almost always overpowers the distant reality of the future.

Faced with so many adversaries, I invariably find myself drawn to the quiet attraction of numbers.

Ciao, and thanks for reading.

 

Riding Shotgun

Life steers the hog.
Mortality rides shotgun.

Scarves billow.
Together they ride—

mostly in harmony
into the orange sunset.

 

A Phantom Hole

Pickleball court.
A missed return—

as if the ball
went straight through
a phantom hole
in the middle of the paddle.

The gentleman stares
in surprise,
and mutters:

What the f___
will you behave
next time?

 

Cognitive Journeys and the Specter of Redundancy

Navigating the fear of intellectual redundancy when embarking on meditative journeys through well-trodden philosophical paths.

 

Standing before millennia of contemplation, a haunting question emerges: Is there anything genuinely new left to say?

Arun Kumar

 

For a retired individual seeking to keep my grey cells regularly exercised, embarking on cognitive journeys often brings an unsettling thought regarding the sheer volume of human knowledge. With thousands of years of recorded philosophy—from ancient Greek thinkers to modern times—further philosophical musings from an amateur like me can easily feel redundant. Confronting the immense weight of prior thought feels like walking through a landscape where every pebble has already been cataloged, documented, and exposed to human view, leaving a realm seemingly devoid of discoverability. Standing before millennia of contemplation, a haunting question emerges: is there anything genuinely new left to say, or any unanalyzed human emotions left to explore?

When examining the human condition and the existential angst triggered by our awareness of mortality, the relevant section in the library of human knowledge feels overwhelmingly vast and exhaustive. There is a sub-section on Stoic traditions that prescribed radical acceptance and rational control. Next to them are modern existentialists who framed existence as absurd or devoid of inherent essence. On the left is a sub-section of Buddhist teachings offering frameworks to untangle suffering by dissolving attachment to the self. Facing these vast philosophical byways and subsections that I have yet to explore, a single individual's awareness can easily feel paralyzed by the overwhelming depth of what came before.

Yet, these personal meditative journeys, perhaps, are far from an exercise in futility. Achieving novelty in thought does not necessarily require carving out entirely new highways; finding tiny new veins that resonate with even a few individuals can still be a worthy goal. Intellectual contributions often arise through recontextualization—applying existing insights in the light of evolving cultural norms or forging unexpected connections across disparate knowledge domains. Novelty can simply be the synthesis of existing ideas when viewed from a unique vantage point.

As an example, exploring the intersection of philosophy and evolutionary biology offers a compelling lens for this recontextualization, particularly in understanding the mechanics of human prospecting—our unique capability to project ourselves into extended temporal windows while holding explicit awareness of our inevitable end. This inquiry raises key foundational questions about whether our capacity for long-term forward projection evolved gradually along a cognitive continuum shared with other species or represents a qualitative quantum leap unique to Homo sapiens. Furthermore, it prompts us to ask why such deep foresight has not emerged as prominently in other species, what ecological or environmental pressures favored this evolutionary anomaly, and how our sensory systems laid the groundwork for abstract mental time travel. Ultimately, understanding the evolutionary roots of temporal awareness might help us navigate existential friction and live lives less burdened by the very foresight that defines us.

Far from being a mere academic exercise, pursuing these meditations serves a practical purpose for cultivating meaningful engagement and finding a personal blueprint to navigate the friction of existence. Consequently, these meditations continue onward, even when doubts about their ultimate originality occasionally surface.

Ciao, and thanks for reading.

 

The Lady at the United Help Desk

The lady
on the United helpline
sorted our tickets
to Venice and back.

Complimented
for her cheerful attitude
and efficiency,
she said:

“No need—
I like helping people.
Besides, I’m just trying
to do my job well.”

What genes
did she carry,
I wondered?

 

Instant Messages

Do not ignore
when the body tweets

subtle messages
of pain and discomfort.

Listen early
if you want to live longer.

 

The Urge

Would a content self
succumb to the urge

of reaching for the screen

over and over
again?

 

Starting Axioms

Key in 2+2=
Some get 5.
Some get 8.
And some, 4.

It all depends
on the axioms of life—

none is less,
none is more.

 

Existential Inventions

The universe
never sought
the meaning of
my breaths.

The desire
was an invention
entirely my own.

 

Low Country Summer

Every morning
glass windows weep—
rivulets running down
in intricate patterns.

Every morning
I hope yesterday marked
the end of their sorrow.

It has been a long
Low Country summer.

 

The Friction of Existence

Looking down
the tunnel of time—
the vision inevitably hits
the mirror of mortality.

The reflection returns.

Chaos ensues.

 

The Missing Flat-Bottomed Cup

The Airbnb was fine,
but it lacked
the small plate heater
and the flat-bottomed mug
that draws in the heat,
letting me savor
a single cup of Earl Grey
over the course of a morning hour.

It is good
to be back home.