Massimo Pigliucci

Now, this may sound kind of depressing and morbid and all that sort of stuff.

But in fact, they're getting at something fundamental here.

The notion that what makes our life meaningful is precisely the fact that it's finite.

Right?

If we actually live forever, if you got to do the same things over and over and over ad infinitum, nothing will matter.

Because you always have a remote control and you can rewind and redo it over.

And so it will lose meaning.

The reality is by focusing, by reminding yourself that time is in fact finite.

And not only that, but that you don't know.

how much you have left, then you need to redouble your efforts to spend the time that you have in a way that it's meaningful, joyous.

It's the way you really want to spend your life.

Think about it this way.

So you're on a trip somewhere, let's say, near the national parks out west, and you have a car.

where the gauge for the gas is broken.

You don't know how much gas you have.

You can estimate.

You can say, well, I started out with a full tank three days ago, so perhaps it's around here, but you don't know for sure.

Now, at that point, you need to make very careful decisions about where you're going.

You can't just take all sorts of detours for all sorts of reasons or for no reason at all because you might get stuck in the middle of nowhere.

You might not get to do what you actually want to do