Quite often, people offer feedback like, "It’s surprising that you struggle to rationalise the everyday choices that sustain life." I often respond wearily, "Yeah, those maths textbook authors never referenced their personal lives."

In those moments, my younger self would mask my ignorance by saying, "Maybe the daily tasks of an ordinary person aren't as challenging or interesting as their work." Hours later, I would revisit the question and ask myself, "If immortality were possible, and the path from a mortal life to immortality mirrored a job promotion in the corporate world, wouldn't one first need to acknowledge their mortal limitations and excel at these everyday tasks as well?" Days later, I would stop asking and dig into these mathematicians' biographies and childhoods. Little was said about how they came to their first words, or how their fathers proposed to their mothers under the mistletoe in the midst of a blizzard. Their censored personal lives, and my acceptance of this unattainable knowledge, have only led to a simple line of self-defeat that underpins all my future decisions: 'keep pushing against this background of white noise.'

Learning in this mortal life is like taking a bus ride home, except that I stop at every bus stop to pick up sticks and stones. Sometimes I get stuck at a stop longer than I should, or my next bus never arrives. At other times, my backpack becomes so full that it overflows and leaves traces of my thoughts behind with every step. This turbulence leaves me circling the same bus stop for another few hours, days or months, only to realise that I was chasing my own tail to my wit's end.