<![CDATA[When I was 16, I wrote a poem that included the line, "Everything that is born begins to die."]]>When I was 16, I wrote a poem that included the line, "Everything that is born begins to die." Had I read philosophy? No, it was quantum physics and thermodynamics. Over the years, as an adult, I encountered Zen and philosophy.
Understanding the inexorability of life, the arrow of time, and watching my elders grow old, I realized that death doesn't arrive suddenly one day; rather, it begins the moment we are born, and that death is the same process as life. My father-in-law used to say at the end of the day, "one more day, more or less" (he was quite the philosopher, that old man).
So why run if fate is decided, why fight if we will lose anyway, why calculate losses and gains if, as Schopenhauer said, life is a business that doesn't cover its costs.
Everything we do, the mere fact of being alive, generates entropy, inexorably pushing the arrow of time forward.
And entropy, physicists tell us, leads to the disintegration of all cosmic structures, to the death of the universe. And that includes me, you, the planet, everything.
Today is all I have; this present moment is the only life I have.


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]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/topic/aac95930-f8cc-4846-8ec4-383a0938aa3f/when-i-was-16-i-wrote-a-poem-that-included-the-line-everything-that-is-born-begins-to-die.RSS for NodeFri, 15 May 2026 02:55:11 GMTThu, 16 Apr 2026 19:25:55 GMT60