A man's lonely life focused on the pursuit of reason and music leaves him questioning what more there may be in the lives of other people and of religion.

In a series of commentaries on the human condition — life, truth, happiness, death — a spinster sister takes in her dead sister’s children; a man is entranced by the endless waves which roll and crash in the ocean; a carpenter wrestles with the burden of being everyone’s confidante; a dying railroad crossing watchman shares a simple but complex wisdom.

The tragic loss of his childhood friend puts a boy on the path of religion - but his inner feelings remain as repressed and turbulent as they always were.

A man trying to find meaning in life has an affair with a girl. He struggles with whether he should tell his wife.

Faced with cancer, Mrs. Wilson confronts her impending death. She finds new strength fight her prognosis with a book, The Will to Live, by the philosopher Schopenhauer.

A few men gather in a small house to discuss what makes humanity unique as compared to the rest of nature.

A professor tries to convey to his students the magnitude of the most perfectly crafted poem ever written in the English language: “Lycidas.”

After his death, a Judge converses with an old friend and a philosopher about the reality of an afterlife and grapples with the idea of regaining people he’s missed his entire life.

A one-hundred-year-old man questions his will to live when he sees the ghost of his deceased wife one night.

On a trip to revisit the grave of their old horse, an isolated farming family connects with the deep messages about life embedded everywhere in nature.