There's a great short story along these lines from Larry Niven. I can't remember the name or the collection, but maybe somebody else will.
A spaceport bar's noise suppression system is on the fritz, so the human bartender keeps hearing random bits from a conversation somewhere in the bar. One alien, a DNA-based one, has come to sell their life-extension technology. The other points out innovative things that humans are doing, and speculates that it's related to the short lifespan. Eventually, the DNA-based alien agrees and decides to wait a few human generations just to see what we do next. The bartender looks around desperately trying to figure out which of the many tables it was, to no avail.
It's a commonplace among artists that constraints force creativity. A small example is the 6-word-stories thing [1]. An example more relevant to your comment is Kevin Kelly's life clock [2]. If you talk to people who have cheated death, you might expect them to talk about being more careful. But the ones I know all talk about being reminded to live fully while we can.
A spaceport bar's noise suppression system is on the fritz, so the human bartender keeps hearing random bits from a conversation somewhere in the bar. One alien, a DNA-based one, has come to sell their life-extension technology. The other points out innovative things that humans are doing, and speculates that it's related to the short lifespan. Eventually, the DNA-based alien agrees and decides to wait a few human generations just to see what we do next. The bartender looks around desperately trying to figure out which of the many tables it was, to no avail.
It's a commonplace among artists that constraints force creativity. A small example is the 6-word-stories thing [1]. An example more relevant to your comment is Kevin Kelly's life clock [2]. If you talk to people who have cheated death, you might expect them to talk about being more careful. But the ones I know all talk about being reminded to live fully while we can.
[1] http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/sixwords.html [2] http://kk.org/ct2/2007/09/my-life-countdown-1.php