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.

A man wakes up one day and realizes the world has ended, and he is the only survivor. He wanders aimlessly and crashes at another house before encountering a woman, who seems to be the only other survivor.

Shipwrecked on a planet whose extreme environment speeds their heart rates, generations of humans age rapidly, living only 8 days each and warring with one another for a cavern that extends the human lifespan to 11 days. When a young man and his girlfriend make it to the only remaining, functional ship, they find that, on the ship, their heartrates and lifespans are extended to normal.

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.

In limbo between life and death after falling five hundred feet into a cement mixer, a construction worker reflects on the nature of love.

A young man in a post-apocalyptic future embarks on a journey to take his parents' ashes to an impossible mountaintop ocean, despite tragic tales of the ill-fated travelers who made the journey before.

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.

Two American soldiers lost in a Japanese jungle must slowly come to accept their mortality.

A woman is trapped for years inside a cave with basic survival supplies, and she tries to get out.

As the world collapses due to an escalated nuclear crisis, a young boy and a man’s lives are joined together as they escape from New York to Iceland. They start a new life of survival there as the world gets dark and cold, but they need the sun to reappear in order to survive long-term.