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Art, with its images and metaphors, offers us another variety of resources to deal with the difficulty in accepting our finitude. Art invites us to observe life and death from new angles.

The play Elefante, by Igor Angelkorte, launches us into a science fiction in which humans have the option of aging or not. It is an allegory of a future in which death would not be a certainty, and almost everyone takes the pill of eternity. Those who do not want to take it seek refuge on an island called Seneca, opting for the finite and transitory life that we know today. It happens that the others, who aspire to eternity, also encounter their end; an accidental end or even that of another kind, that is perhaps more tragic: the weariness of inanity, the banality of meaningless actions, and the anguish generated by the prospect of eternal permanence. The play narrates the drama of this choice.

The film April, by Nanni Moretti, portrays the impact of becoming aware of the time that we don’t have to lose. The protagonist turns 44 and is gifted a measuring tape by a friend. The friend asks him to indicate there how many years he wants to live. He responds with 80. The friend marks 44 centimeters and extends the measuring tape to 80 centimeters. Stunned, upon realizing that the interval that remains is small, he regrets not having indicated a number closer to 100. The sudden awareness that life is finite makes him immediately embrace his dream project.