Scottish author and cleric Richard Holloway writes in Looking in the Distance: The Human Search for Meaning (2004,)

When the map of our life is complete, and we die in the richness of our own history, some among the living will miss us for a while, but the earth will go on without us. Its day is longer than ours, though we now know that it too will die. Our brief finitude is but a beautiful spark in the vast darkness of space. So we should live the fleeting day with passion and, when the dark night comes, depart from it with grace.