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There is something deeply ironic about how only the thought of our deaths gives us reason to truly think about our lives.
Memento mori is a tradition as old as it is haunting, and the brief encounters we have with our own mortality can stop us in our tracks, until life inevitably pulls us back into its folds and we regain our blissful ignorance about how the curtains will one day fall on us as they have on everyone else before us.
Now pair the reality of your own ending with another, quieter truth: There will come a final moment when your name is spoken for the last time.
That thought alone is one of the most powerful invitations to look inward and to ask not how long we will live but how much our lives will have mattered.
The last time anyone ever says your name
In my fall leadership classes, I ask students to close their eyes and imagine the last person who will ever have reason to say their name out loud.
Once we have their picture in our heads, we go one step deeper. What are they feeling as they do it? In what moment are they saying it? Do they know you, or do they only know of you? Does your name carry an emotional spark, or has it turned into a fact of genealogy or history, lifeless and still?
The most common answer the question elicits is our grandchildren, and it is easy to see why. When we look back at our own family trees, great-grandparents are often already too far away for us to recall their names, let alone know anything meaningful about their lives. Grandparents, on the other hand, have often touched our lives and left memories we cherish long after they departed.
Some go further still, carried by a family historian’s meticulous work through the archives. Others trace their lineage to distant figures, such as Genghis Khan or Lucy, who are statistically likely to have had a role to play in our existence and who are now known as the myths they have become.
Then there is another kind of endurance that arises in the exercise. Some believe their names will live on through what they build. Rockefeller, Carnegie, the Rothschilds, and even Elon Musk are all proof of how great deeds and accomplishments can cement a person in collective memory. Yet simply having your name spoken by the masses misses the real point of the question.
Because what we truly want is for our name to mean something to those whose lips it escapes.
Living a life of meaning
Being remembered is a tempting goal to have, but it is ultimately a hollow pursuit.
Think of anyone whose name has survived the centuries. The lives they actually lived were far richer than whatever it is that we know of them today. Each passing generation strips away their memory until all that is left is a caricature, devoid of whatever meaning once lay behind the name that the legacy now carries forward.
It is worth asking whether it is enough to be remembered if those who remember never truly knew us to begin with?
These are the questions that matter. Optimizing for remembrance distracts us from what makes life meaningful in the first place. Fulfillment is found in the people we connect with and the lives we touch, and it is their remembrance of us that we care about deep down in our hearts.
One student put it best: “Why would I even care if I’m remembered? I’ll be dead.” Their skepticism was spot on. The only thing we are promised is the present, which is also why this thought experiment matters.
Thinking of the legacy we leave and realizing that it is all about the people we’ve lifted up and the ones who found strength or comfort through us is the starkest possible reminder to live well right here and now.
Every interaction, every kindness, every shared moment writes a small line in the story of who we were. And one day, long after the world has stopped speaking our names, that story will still echo quietly in the lives we’ve touched.
