A Meditation on Gratitude and Finitude Press enter or click to view image in full size Photo by the author. ☩ ☩ ☩ An Existential Excavation ☩ ☩ ☩ We tend to live as though we are immortal. We devote our time and energy to meaningless pursuits: a fancier car, a bigger house, more stuff. Hours spent scrolling and binging TV shows. I realize that it is nearly impossible for the Western mind to live in intentional mindfulness all the time, but the fact is each of us has a specific number of minutes and hours of this consciousness on this planet (as far as we can tell). Many influential thinkers have echoed this sentiment, perhaps none better than our friend Marcus Aurelius, who said, “You could leave life right now.…