Achilles Heel

The end of life is like the famous race between Achilles and the tortoise. Zeno, who coined the famous paradox, was an Eleatic (Zeno of Elea). The stoic tradition out of which this school derives argues for the unchanging nature of the world. The Milesians, Anaximander, Thales and Anaximenes believed  in change. Pound said it best in his translation of "Exile's Letter," “if you ask how I regret that parting? It’s like the flowers falling at Spring’s end, confused whirled in a tangle." You would think that death was not proud and that its mission was expediency. Yet anecdotal evidence shows it as an incredibly slow process. Like Achilles who's always going half of his previous distance, the dying person may complain of emptiness, boredom and the feeling of never getting there until  the day they die. 

Read "Magnitudes of Finitude" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and listen to "I've Got Dreams to Remember" by Otis Redding