Mortal

The thing about mortality, the kicker, the grand cosmic punchline, is that we all know how it ends, but no one’s allowed to peek at the script. That’s the joke, right? Life is a live performance where the actors don’t know their cues, and the audience is too polite to point out when we’re stumbling over our lines. It’s absurd and beautiful and maddening all at once. And that’s what makes it so uniquely human.

Let’s start with the basics: we’re born, we breathe, we fumble through the act of being alive, and then, someday, we stop. No refunds, no exchanges. If you were expecting a neatly wrapped conclusion, sorry, this isn’t a Netflix series. It’s more like public access television—messy, strange, and occasionally brilliant. We’re all stuck in this cosmic waiting room, flipping through the same old magazines, wondering when our number will be called.

What’s fascinating, though, is how we handle it. Humans are the only species clever enough to know we’re doomed and bold enough to laugh about it. We write poems, build monuments, and send probes into the void—not to escape our fate, but to shout into the infinite, “We were here!” It’s like trying to graffiti a waterfall. The water keeps flowing, but damn if we don’t try to leave our mark.

Death isn’t the enemy, though. It’s the boundary that gives life its shape. If we lived forever, sunsets would be background noise. Scarcity makes beauty. Would we savor a good laugh, a good meal, or a good cry if they weren’t fleeting? Mortality sharpens the edges of existence, carving meaning out of the chaos.

But oh, how we love to play chicken with the inevitable. Anti-aging creams, cryogenic freezing, fitness cults that promise immortality if you plank long enough—it’s all so wonderfully human, this endless dance with denial. The truth? We’re all betting against the house, and the house always wins. But the game’s the point, not the score.

Life itself? It’s a bizarre, miraculous thing. Stardust and entropy coalescing into fragile meat-sacks, stumbling around trying to understand themselves. We invent art, science, and absurd internet trends, all in an attempt to make sense of it. We’re the universe’s way of observing itself, its self-aware experiment in chaos and consciousness. Isn’t that wild?

So what do we do with this knowledge? Maybe nothing. Maybe the point isn’t finding an answer but reveling in the questions. To be alive is to walk a tightrope over an abyss and to marvel at the view instead of staring down. Maybe it’s enough to just be—to love, to laugh, to stumble, and to try again.

In the end, mortality is the great equalizer. Kings and clowns, poets and plumbers—we all end up in the same dirt. But while we’re here, we get to live. To breathe. To make a mess and call it art. If that’s not miraculous, what is?

So here’s to the cosmic waiting room, to the absurdity and beauty of it all. Here’s to the fleeting miracle of being alive. And when the bouncer taps your shoulder, tip your hat and say thanks. It’s been one hell of a ride.

-sedale