Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying.

"Where is it I've read that someone condemned to death says or think, an hour before his death, that if he had to live on some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he'd only room to stand, and the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest around him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live so than to die at once! Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!"
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment.

Is it better to live this painful existence, teetering on the brink of death, or is it better to submit ourselves to the 'infinite finality' of death?