Every life has a beginning and an ending. We know the beginning. We celebrate it every year of our lives. What about the ending?

We do not want to think about it. Somehow, we imagine we can avoid it—if not forever, then at least for a very long time.

The quest for immortality is as old as humanity itself. Gilgamesh, the world's oldest surviving epic, tells the story of a king's search for immortality, only for him to realize in the end that it is a futile quest:

Where a e you hurrying to? You will never find that life for which you are looking. When the gods created man they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping. —The Epic of Gilgamesh

Before us, some 110 billion people have lived on this earth. None of them are alive today. Yet, we do not think that we, too, are going to die. How strange!

Day after day, countless creatures go to the abode of Death. Yet those who remain believe themselves to be permanent. What could be a greater wonder than this? —Mahabharata

This inability to accept the finitude of life makes us live inefficiently. Suppose you have the opportunity to visit a faraway city for only three days. Wouldn't you try to see as much of it as possible? Now imagine that you expect to live in that city indefinitely. Would you even make an effort to visit the major landmarks in those same three days?

We are visitors in this strange and beautiful world. If we understand that our stay is brief, we are likely to live much more vividly than if we imagine our end to be nowhere in sight. When we realize that this mysterious world is not ours forever, we can appreciate its wonders with the attentiveness of a traveler in an exotic land.

How can we understand life if we refuse to understand death, which is always stalking us? It is for this reason that many philosophers, including the Stoics, urged us to note memento moi—remember that you must die. This is not a morbid exhortation but an invitation to understand the nature of life and make the most of it while we still can.

Once we understand that life is finite, we no longer see death as a single event awaiting us somewhere in the future. Imagine that you live to be one hundred years old. Even then, every passing day brings you one day closer to death. Every day gone is a day lost forever. We do not die only once; we die gradually, every day.

Each day we are crying. Each day another piece of our life is cast aside... Whatever time has passed on before the present has perished; right now we divide even this very day with death. — Seneca, Moral Letters 24

Dying is part of living. If we cannot understand dying, we cannot understand living. We cannot live fully while pretending that death does not exist.

Awareness of our mortality creates a sense of urgency. It is this urgency that awakens us from a lethargic way of life. When we realize that our time is limited, we begin to live more intensely.

Be not as one that hath ten thousand years to live; death is nigh at hand: while thou livest, while thou hast time, be good. — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.17

Death is the hunter. Every day it draws a little closer. In such a world, there is only time to act. No time for doubts. No time for regrets.

In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions. — Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan

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