Nothing Lasts Forever. So Why Does Any of It Matter?
Some people want to leave a record of their lives. They keep photographs, save letters, write down family histories and take pleasure in knowing that the stories they carry will be passed on. They think about what will happen when they die, what they will leave behind, and how they might make things easier for the people who will eventually have to sort through it all.
Other people have little interest in any of this. They don't particularly care about preserving the past, don't see the point in recording their memories, and would rather not think about what happens to their possessions when they're gone. They might consider the whole exercise unnecessary, self-indulgent or simply a job for another day.
Most of us probably sit somewhere between these two positions, although our attitudes can change throughout our lives.
We all have different relationships with the things we own, the memories we hold and the idea of being remembered. Some of us are sentimental. Others are decidedly not. Some find comfort in holding on to the past, while others prefer to travel light. Some want to leave behind an organised archive of their existence. Others would be perfectly happy for someone to hire a skip.
Neither approach is inherently better than the other. But our differences raise an interesting question: if none of us gets to keep anything forever, why should we care what happens to our things, our stories or our memories in the first place?
We don't all attach the same meaning to things
Sentimentality is an interesting thing. One person can look at a box of old photographs and see an irreplaceable record of their life. Another sees a box of photographs that takes up space.
An inherited ornament might be a treasured connection to someone who has died, or it might be an object that has been gathering dust in a cupboard for thirty years because nobody has quite known what to do with it. A handwritten letter can be an intimate piece of history or a collection of words that have served their purpose. The physical object hasn't changed; its meaning exists in the relationship someone has with it.
And that relationship is rarely as simple as whether we love the person who gave it to us. We can love someone without wanting their possessions. We can cherish a relationship without needing to preserve every photograph of it. We can have a rich emotional life without feeling compelled to document it.
Equally, the person who keeps everything isn't necessarily more loving or more connected to their past than the person who keeps very little. Sentimentality is not a reliable measure of how deeply we feel. Yet these differences become particularly significant when we consider what happens after death.
One person might spend years organising their possessions, labelling photographs and writing down family stories because they don't want to leave a burden for others. Someone else might leave behind an entire house full of belongings, with no instructions, no records and no apparent interest in what happens to any of it.
For the people left to deal with the practical and emotional consequences, these situations can be very different experiences. The first person has made decisions that may save others time, money and difficult choices. The second may leave loved ones with a considerable amount of work, alongside the task of navigating their own grief.
Neither person's intentions are necessarily unkind. The difference is that one has engaged with the consequences of their eventual absence, while the other may not have considered them, or may have decided not to. That distinction matters, regardless of how sentimental either person happens to be.
The problem with thinking we have all the time in the world
There are plenty of reasons why people avoid thinking about their own death. It can feel abstract, uncomfortable or too distant to warrant attention. For some, the subject brings up anxiety or painful experiences. Others simply have more immediate things to worry about.
It is also remarkably easy to assume that there will be time to deal with these things later.
Later, we might sort through the photographs. Later, we might ask our parents about their childhoods. Later, we might write down the story behind that strange object on the mantelpiece. Later, we might make a will, record our wishes or explain what we want to happen to the things that matter to us. Those are all things I can think about later, down the road…when I’m eighty, right?
But death doesn't necessarily arrive at a convenient point in our lives, when all the practicalities have been taken care of and everyone has had the conversations they needed to have. This is not an argument for living in a state of constant preparation. We cannot spend our lives anticipating every possible ending. Nor should we feel obliged to turn our existence into an administrative project, endlessly documenting and organising ourselves in preparation for a future we will never experience.
There is a balance to be found between acknowledging our mortality and allowing it to dominate our attention. The difficulty is that avoiding the subject altogether doesn't make its consequences disappear. It simply means that some decisions may eventually be made by someone else, under circumstances we cannot control. And the person who has to make those decisions may be dealing with considerably more than a practical problem.
They may be trying to work out whether an apparently insignificant object should be kept because it belonged to someone they loved. They may be searching through boxes for photographs, trying to piece together a family history. They may discover that they know very little about the person whose life they are now trying to make sense of.
Sometimes, what is missing is not a possession but an explanation. We cannot anticipate every question someone might have after we're gone. But we can recognise that the decisions we make during our lives can affect the experiences of people who outlive us.
Does a life need to mean something? Let’s get philosophical for a moment…
Author’s note: I’m not here to undermine anyone’s beliefs, but this is my little corner of the internet and I enjoy creating a space to wrestle with the big questions and perhaps poke readers to think beyond what their cultural upbringing taught them to believe. The following might be uncomfortable for some, but stick it out…it gets easier, I promise. Or, if you have a sensitive constitution, perhaps skip this article for another, less challenging topic. I promise, I won’t even know.
This is where things become more philosophical.
Albert Camus, writing about the absurd, explored the tension between our human desire for meaning and a universe that offers no clear explanation for our existence. We want our lives to add up to something. We want there to be a reason we are here, a purpose to our experiences and perhaps some assurance that what we do will ultimately matter.
But the universe doesn't appear to offer us any such guarantee.
We are born, we live, we die. The world continues. The things we build eventually decay. The people who remember us will also die, and the memories they carry will eventually disappear. Even the most significant achievements in human history exist within a universe that will not preserve them indefinitely.
From this perspective, the idea of leaving a lasting legacy can seem a little absurd. Why spend so much time worrying about whether we will be remembered when remembrance itself is temporary?
But Camus's response to the absurd was not simply to conclude that nothing matters and give up. His philosophy asks how we might live honestly in the absence of ultimate meaning, without inventing guarantees that we cannot have. It is concerned with how we live, not merely with whether the universe gives our lives a purpose.
This distinction matters to me.
I lean towards absurdism rather than nihilism. I don't need to believe that my life has some permanent cosmic significance in order to find it worth living in the moment. I don't need to believe that my actions will echo through eternity, or that the things I create will survive indefinitely, to care about what I do with the time I have.
The fact that something will eventually end doesn't make it irrelevant while it exists. A meal doesn't become pointless because it will be eaten. A friendship doesn't become worthless because it will end. A beautiful landscape doesn't lose its value because it will eventually change beyond recognition. And the fact that we will die doesn't mean that the ways we live are inconsequential.
We experience our lives in the present. We affect one another in the present. Our actions can make other people's lives easier or harder, more interesting or more restricted, more connected or more isolated. Those consequences are real, even if they are not permanent.
I’m quite comfortable with the unknown, and I don’t need a belief system that promises me anything after I die. I think, perhaps it is enough to recognise that what we do matters to those in the here and now and the ones that will be left to handle our affairs when we are gone. And so, I will live and experience as much as I can, and try not to leave too much of a mess for anyone else to clean up in my absence.
What do we owe the people who come after us?
I don't think we have a moral obligation to leave behind a carefully curated account of our existence. Nobody should feel pressured to create scrapbooks, write memoirs or preserve family heirlooms simply because these are considered worthwhile things to do.
Some people have no desire to be remembered. Others have good reasons for not wanting parts of their lives preserved or passed on. There are people whose histories contain experiences they would rather leave behind, and people who have spent their lives carrying the burden of family expectations they no longer wish to uphold.
A meaningful approach to legacy must leave room for all of this. But there is a difference between choosing not to preserve something and never considering the consequences of leaving it behind.
If we know that our possessions will eventually become someone else's responsibility, we can make decisions about what we keep, what we pass on and what we let go of. If we know that the people we love might want to understand more about our lives, we can choose to share some of our stories while we are here to tell them. If we have wishes about our care, our funeral or what happens to our belongings, we can communicate them rather than leaving others to guess. And, most importantly, if a person honestly doesn’t care, communicating that clearly to those who will need to make decisions is an act of love. Giving people permission to make decisions they feel are best in the moment can free your loved ones from the burden of trying to honour your memory by figuring out what you would have wanted.
These are not necessarily sentimental acts. They can be practical ones. They are ways of recognising that our lives do not exist in isolation, and that our choices have consequences beyond our own immediate experience. There is a useful distinction here between preserving our legacy for our own sake and making thoughtful decisions for the sake of others.
We might want to be remembered because we find comfort in the idea that some part of us will continue. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. But we might also choose to record a story because it could help someone understand their family, or organise our possessions because we don't want to leave someone else with an unnecessary burden.
We can do these things without believing that our names will endure forever. We can do them simply because other people's experiences matter to us now.
Nothing lasts forever, but that doesn't mean nothing matters. It means that whatever matters, matters here, while we are here, in the lives we are living together.
Interested in hearing more about personal legacy curation, Swedish death cleaning or advance planning? Check out my talks and workshops here. Gather a group and invite me along for a chat or creative workshop.
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