Our universe has a deep preference for circles. Standing on Earth and looking up, circular shapes abound: the moon, the sun, our neighboring planets, and the distant stars. Looking back down at our planet, as astronauts do, it becomes clear that the only perfectly straight lines are those drawn by human hands. Nature itself prefers the curve. Rivers roam in sinuous paths, peaked mountains erode into rounded hilltops, and treetops, flowers, and microscopic cells all rely on the structural integrity of the circle. Even a single drop of water falling into a still pond sends ripples outward in perfect, expanding rings. Circles are everywhere.
Why, then, do we so often resist the circular nature of life itself?
Too much human energy is spent trying to deny that death is simply the inevitable, final arc that closes the loop. Today, some of our species’ greatest minds are engaged in a well-funded quest for immortality. Tech ventures like the Google affiliate Calico Labs and the Jeff Bezos-funded Altos Labs are spending billions of dollars on longevity technology.
Yet many philosophers and scientists argue that this pursuit misses the point. At Cambridge University, Dr. Stephen Cave—author of Immortality: The Quest to Live Forever and How It Drives Civilization—suggests that physical immortality is a fantasy rather than a worthy scientific goal. He argues that life is a treasure precisely because it is brief and bounded. Our focus, he suggests, should be on the quality of our days, not their sheer duration.
That sense of life as a fleeting, precious gift is a core truth of the poetic tradition, and it is the heart of this blog. My mission remains focused on navigating the uncharted waters of elderhood—learning the delicate balance of letting life go while holding onto joy.
Admittedly, as the horizon grows closer, joy can feel elusive. Some days are exhausting, and the daily struggle can cloud the perspective. On those darker days, it is easy to prefer the quiet retreat of sleep over the vulnerability required to stay open to the world. During these difficult moments, the words of my favorite poets serve as comforting mantras, anchoring me back to the circle.
Mary Oliver, in her beloved poem “When Death Comes,” reminds us to live fully before the end arrives:
“When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”
In “The Prophet,”Kahlil Gibran beautifully captures the indivisible continuity of existence:
“If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life. For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.”
Walt Whitman offers a similarly expansive view in “Song of Myself,” reframing our standard fears:
“The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas’s the moment life appear’d.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”
Emily Dickinson lends her characteristically gentle, lyrical perspective to the inevitable transition:
“Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –”
Finally, the Quaker writer Parker Palmer mused on this seamless integration in a recent essay, capturing the peace that comes with acceptance:
“I knew no fear of death. Instead, it seemed clear that death would weave me more deeply into the tapestry of life that has been my home all along, just as all this autumn dying is reweaving the earth’s elements into yet another season of green growth.”
By accepting the final arc, we stop fighting the shape of our existence and finally learn how to inhabit it completely.
Note: Credit to Gemini AI for the graphic and editing of the blog
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