And All That Lies Between
Reflections on love, time, and the infinities we find between beginnings and endings.
“You Put the Thing That Does the Killing Between Your Teeth”—2021
I have watched very few movies twice in my lifetime — To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Before Sunrise, The Shawshank Redemption — and I’ve watched even fewer thrice.
In fact, only one: The Fault in Our Stars. Hazel and Gus’s love story.
At this point, I think I’m a hopeless romantic. Romance movies will always have a place in my heart.
I watched The Fault in Our Stars for the first time in 2021, when Popsii first gave me and my siblings a laptop. I was in secondary school then, just a year before graduation. Among all the things I could have done with that laptop, I found myself spending my life and my time watching movies, was i captivated by Hazel’s smartness — and by the concept of romance itself ? maybe yes.
But back then, I didn’t understand a lot of things in the movie. Like Gus’s metaphor of putting a cigarette between his lips but never lighting it. In his exact words, “You put the thing that does the killing right between your teeth, but you never give it the power to kill you.”
That idea of daring death, of playing catch-me-if-you-can with life, fascinated me. The thought that death — and the fear of not existing — is what gives life its meaning in the first place.
I didn’t understand Hazel’s realism about oblivion, or why Gus tried to romanticize it even though he feared it deeply — the fear of what lies ahead, and what doesn’t. Or their idea of saying “Okay” as their version of Isaac and Monica’s “Always.”
There was so much that went over my head then. I just loved it for what it was — a beautiful love story.
Now, I laugh at the chasm between myself then and now.
“Okay?” “Okay.”— 2023
The second time I watched it was in early 2023. By then, I had finished secondary school and had my first phone. As a young graduate with too much time and not enough direction, I started searching for romance movies and making lists — Five Feet Apart, Me Before You, After, Life in a Year, The Sun Is Also a Star, Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between, Midnight Sun — the list went on.
Somewhere down that list, The Fault in Our Stars popped up again. I had almost forgotten I’d seen it before. I downloaded it, anticipating something new. The movie started, and somewhere in the first few minutes, I realized — wait, I’ve watched this before. Still, I decided to keep watching, casually this time.
Then came Hazel’s eulogy for Gus in his pre-funeral, and even now, it gives me goosebumps:
“I can’t talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a Bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I’m likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.”
The first time I heard it, I didn’t understand the concept of some infinities being greater than others — or the meaning of a forever within numbered days.
I didn’t understand it when Peter Van Houten said it in Amsterdam, and I didn’t understand it when Hazel said it again. I didn’t even care to understand. I just wanted to finish my movie list.
“Some Infinities Are Bigger Than Other Infinities”— 2025
Fast forward to 2025.
I came across an Instagram reel — that exact part of the movie: Hazel’s eulogy. I watched it again, and again , and again , it didn’t hit differently. I ended up talking with one of my friends about the idea that some infinities are bigger than others. He didn’t have much to say either, which surprised me, because he’s one of the smartest science geeks I know.
As an engineering student now — one who’s unstably curious — I decided to dive into the wormhole of infinity.
(You might want to skip this part if you find maths boring in its entirety.😂)
I read about real numbers, rational and irrational numbers, complex numbers, integers, and natural numbers. Then I stumbled on sets and the concept of mapping, and finally — Georg Cantor. Yes, the same Cantor that Peter Van Houten mentioned. I read about his diagonalization argument, how real numbers cannot be put into a one-to-one correspondence with natural numbers, and thus represent a higher order of infinity.
If each number in the set of all natural numbers can be mapped to a number in the set of real numbers, but not all real numbers can be mapped back to natural numbers, it means the set of real numbers has a greater cardinality — a greater infinity.
If you didn’t understand a thing I just said, that’s perfectly fine. I didn’t either when I first read it. But from that, I learned that there are two kinds of infinities: countable and uncountable. Though the idea itself sounds absurd — how can infinity be countable?
I prefer to think of it as listable and unlistable infinities.
So yes, some infinities are, in fact, greater than others — both mathematically and intuitively.
A Forever Within Numbered Days
All I Want by Kodaline plays, fading into the background — “But If you loved me why’d you leave me…” — the same one from that scene where Gus held Hazel while Isaac threw eggs at Monica’s car. It’s been on repeat for two hours now, and maybe that’s why I understand Hazel’s words a little better.
Hazel said, “You gave me a forever within our numbered days.” A year ago, I would’ve thought it was just something dying lovers say to each other.But I think I understand it now — or at least a glimpse of it.
If we take two fixed numbers, say 0 and 1 — our numbered days — there exist countless values between them: 0.1, 0.23, 0.125, 0.1254, and infinitely more.
Within those boundaries lies an infinity. A forever.
It’s strange how two points that look so finite can contain something endless.
Mathematically, it means that even if life is short, it can still be dense — packed, overflowing with moments so close together that they blur into continuity. That love is the uncountable inside the countable. That a finite life can hold infinite meaning.
Philosophically, it’s the same truth — that time is not measured by the ticking of a clock, but by the depth of experience. That a week of true love can outlive a lifetime of indifference. That one second of meaning stretches further than years spent empty.
A “forever within numbered days” isn’t about its length but its intensity — about living so deeply that the finite dissolves into something uncountable. Just like between 0 and 1 lies an infinite series of decimals, between birth and death lies an infinite series of moments — glances, touches, silences, memories — each one unrepeatable, each one infinite in its own way.
And maybe that’s what Hazel meant.
Or maybe not.
Maybe that’s just what it means to me.
That forever isn’t something you chase — it’s something you feel, compressed within the fragile boundaries of time. That love, when real, doesn’t need eternity to be eternal.
“Amor Fati” — The Art of Living with What Is
Since I’ve been thinking about infinities and continuities lately, I would say nothing ever really ends.
I’ve come to understand Omnis cellula e cellula, what Peter Van Houten said to Hazel, which translates to life comes from life. Life begets life. That death isn’t the end, and that a person’s life can continue in the lives of others.
It makes sense somehow. If infinities can exist within limits, then continuities can exist within endings. Maybe that’s what it means to keep living through others.
I’ve come to believe that you begin saving the world by changing the life of one person.
I’ve learned from Isaac that sometimes pain demands to be felt.
And I’ve realized that no matter how much time we have, we can still make an impact because a life is important, no matter how long or how short.
And for the most, I’ve come to understand the concept of Amor fati — the love of one’s fate, living your life exactly the way you’d want to relive it if given the chance to do so.
And perhaps, if I ever had to write my epitaph, it would read:
Here lies one who loved like there was no tomorrow,
and laughed as if sorrow never had his name.
He wasn’t trying to be remembered — just trying to live before he died.
Pour one out for the ones who dared to feel it all.