Parabolic Trajectories and Finding Grace in Mortality

 

Life is a trajectory, arcing through the vast field of mortality, each moment a point of motion that carries us forward and it is us who create meaning along the way.

Arun Kumar

Arun Kumar + AI: Escaping Velocity

Summary: Mortality and gravity are both ever-present forces shaping life’s trajectory. While gravity’s effects are predictable, mortality’s path is uncertain, highlighting life’s fragility. Yet moments of transcendence — spiritual, emotional, or sensory — offer glimpses beyond finitude, connecting us to the infinite. These experiences may serve as our “escape velocity” from mortality’s pull.

Mortality and gravity — whether we realize it or not, share conceptual similarities.

Consider us and the Earth: within their sphere both gravity and mortality are ever-present. From the moment of birth, mortality exerts a constant pull, steering the trajectory of life toward its inevitable end. Likewise, the Earth’s gravity continually draws us — and everything on its surface — toward its center. If we throw a stone into the air, gravity ensures its path forms a graceful parabola, bringing it back to the ground.

A key difference between the two, however, is that mortality’s effect on the trajectory of life is far less predictable or graceful than the path of a stone. Life’s journey can come to a sudden, unexpected halt, reaching its end abruptly. At other times, for reasons unknown and unpredictable, lives that seem similar at birth follow vastly different paths — some longer, some shorter. Unpredictability aside, perhaps just as a stone traces a graceful parabola in the field of gravity, there are trajectories of life within the field of mortality that might also be deemed graceful.

As a conscious species, the awareness of mortality is also an awareness of our finitude. Part of this realization also involves recognizing its opposite — what we are not. Our life’s trajectory may be brief, and it feels even smaller when measured against the vast expanse of time in the universe.

From my perspective, life has two ends, yet the music of existence was playing long before I appeared and will continue long after I am gone. Everyone observes this in the world around them: babies are born after I was there, while others pass away while I am still here.

The same holds true for space. After birth, our movements rarely stray far from where we are. Occasionally, we may take a vacation and journey to the opposite side of the Earth, but even those distances are insignificant compared to the vastness of space that is out there. From high above, our daily wanderings, if traced on paper, might resemble the erratic buzz of a mosquito confined to a radius of just 10 feet.

As unsettling as the awareness of mortality may be, it also brings with it a profound recognition of the vastness of space and time that transcends us. If only we could find a portal to bridge the divide between the two, we might escape the constraints of our finitude.

In the realm of gravity, there exists the concept of escape velocity. With enough force, a stone hurled at an initial velocity of 11 km/s will break free from Earth’s gravitational pull, continuing its journey indefinitely into the void of space.

Could there be something analogous that propels us beyond the limitations of mortality, connecting us to the boundless expanse of space and time? Is there a force that, working against the field of mortality, might grant us a sense of timelessness? Perhaps there is.

The transcendental and spiritual experiences we have been told about may serve as the escape velocity in the context of mortality. At times, even without consciously seeking them, we are unexpectedly struck by sublime moments that connect our finite sense of self with the vastness beyond. These moments might include holding your newborn for the first time, savoring the first bite of a cheesecake, standing at the edge of Point Udall in St. Croix and gazing at the endless blue ocean stretching to the horizon, or experiencing a psychedelic epiphany.

In such instances, the limitations of mortality seem to dissolve, and we are propelled beyond the constraints of mortality, connecting with the timeless continuum of all that existed before us and all that will endure after us. In these moments, we shed our sense of finitude and glimpse the vastness of infinite.

And so, just as there is a mechanism to overcome gravity, there exists one to propel us beyond the constraints of mortality: transcendental experiences. If only those fleeting moments could last longer.

Ciao, and thanks for reading.

The times we live in...

People departed
live on as contacts,
among those I friended
and if not, then
as their friends of friends.

In old emails
ghosts of the past linger
and on random occasions
to say boo or hello

when searching for John D.,
the one who is living,
a dead one in ether says
Aye.

For a moment
it feels discombobulating
conversing with the dead.

Such are the times
we live in. 

Life's Algebra

 

Add or subtract,
multiply or divide -
life's algebra
never quite aligns
just right.

Risking It All for 90 Seconds

 It is not the likelihood of the fall, but the weight of its consequences that demands caution.

Arun Kumar

Arun Kumar + AI: A Man Falling on a Busy Road

Summary: During a trip to Geneva, Salim chose to jaywalk instead of waiting 90 seconds at a pedestrian signal. Mid-crossing, he tripped and narrowly avoided an oncoming car. Embarrassed but unharmed, he later reflected on how easily the incident could have ended in serious injury or worse. Salim’s experience is a reminder that decisions with low probability of adverse outcomes can have potentially outsize life-altering consequences.

The incident occurred during a one-week trip to Geneva — an event that, with slightly different outcomes, could have had lifelong repercussions. A small twist of fate, and Salim would have endlessly wished to turn back time, altering the moment that upended his life.

Salim had enjoyed the familiar routine of visiting Geneva and taking the train from the airport to Gare Cornavin. Stepping out of the station, he felt a sense of comfort as familiar sights greeted him: the Hotel Bernina directly across and, to its right, Les Brasseurs, where he’d enjoyed many dinners on past trips. Salim often remarked how much easier it was to travel to places he knew well, requiring little preparation and offering a sense of ease.

It was a pleasant evening in early December, uncharacteristically mild for Geneva. Since his arrival, there had been no rain. That evening, at a dinner with colleagues at Little India, Salim had savored his favorite dishes: onion bhaji with tamarind chutney, saag paneer, and, mindful of his blood sugar, just a small portion of rice. Feeling content, he strolled along Rue Lausanne back to his hotel. Rue Lausanne was bustling, as always, with cars streaming in both directions and Tram №15 periodically rattling past.

To reach his hotel, Salim needed to cross Rue Lausanne, a road with multiple stoplights to ensure safe pedestrian crossing. But for reasons he couldn’t later recall, he decided against walking to the nearest crossing. Perhaps the idea of waiting 90 seconds for the pedestrian signal to turn green seemed like an unnecessary delay. Instead, he glanced left and right, judged the traffic, and decided he had enough time to cross.

Things didn’t go as planned. As Salim hurried across, he tripped and fell — right in front of an oncoming car he’d initially deemed far enough away. In his calculations, he hadn’t accounted time for a fall, the need to scramble up, or the panic that would follow.

Luckily, adrenalin kicked in, Salim managed to get up in a hurry and reach the opposite curb in time. When there, his first thought wasn’t about potential injuries. Instead, he was mortified by being the object of a socially awkward situation. Desperate to avoid attention, he briskly walked away, pretending as though nothing had happened. It was only after putting a few blocks between himself and the location of incident that he began to check for injuries. His knees stung, and his durable blue jeans had torn at the right knee — a testament to the severity of his fall. When he finally reached his hotel room, a body scan revealed scraped knees and a bruised left palm, the latter having borne the brunt of his fall.

Salim couldn’t help but reflect on how much worse things could have been. Struck by the car, he might have sustained serious injuries, necessitating medical care in a foreign country. If he had not gotten out of the way quickly, the driver of the oncoming car might have had to slam on the brakes, possibly causing another accident.

And all this for the sake of saving 90 seconds.

Those 90 seconds, insignificant as they seemed, could have brought about a lifetime of regret. Even though none of the worst-case scenarios materialized, the incident served as a sobering lesson: saving a few moments isn’t worth the risk of catastrophic consequences. The cost-benefit analysis was clear — even if tripping was an unlikely event, the stakes if it did happen were too high.

To this day, Salim occasionally revisits that memory. He wonders about the thoughts of those who witnessed the scene. Did a mother tell her child to learn from “that man” and always wait for the pedestrian signal? Did someone shake their head, believing Salim deserved the scare for disregarding safety rules? Whatever their thoughts, Salim will never know. He is just thankful that he got away easy.

Ciao, and thanks for reading.