The world is filled with advice about how we should live our lives. One of the most widely loved is the recommendation to “live every day as though it’s your last,” or “live as if there’s no tomorrow”. For most of us, I think that’s good advice. It’s hard to get by, and we’re told it’s always our fault when we struggle, and that the only answer is to work more, live less.

And every once in a while, you’ll get a reminder that few people end their lives wishing they’d spent more time at the office. Live as if there’s no tomorrow because you’re holding yourself back from things you want, because you’re afraid of what would happen if you didn’t. Live as if there’s no tomorrow because you matter, and because you have a right to joy and satisfaction in this brief life.

Well, today I want to tell you to live as if there are tomorrows without end, and give a little thought to those in the future who are looking back at us, even now, and trying to figure out what we’re doing. Today I am making the case for you to write down your own story, in whatever way seems best to you.

For most of the last six years, Tegan has been studying early modern English musical culture. Since I’ve been along for the ride, I’ve had the opportunity to watch a historian studying something from a new angle. It’s been an interesting journey, and one of the things that really stood out to me is the degree to which history, at least as it’s practiced today, isn’t so much written, as it is pulled together into a collage that forms a sort of impressionist painting of the past. One of the more famous examples of this from the early modern period is the diary of Samuel Pepys, who kept a detailed, candid record of his own life from 1660 to 1669. As a politician and a naval officer, it can be argued he had more of an impact on the events of his time than most men, but he is not generally considered a major historical figure in the conventional sense.

What he became, however, was one of the best sources of information about life during that period. Most notably, he lived through the Great Plague of London, and the Fire of London, and kept records of the goings-on surrounding those disasters.

Another example would be good old Ea-nāṣir, the most famous mediocre copper merchant in history, whose business records, including a number of written complaints, survived to give us a window into life in the ancient city of Ur.

I don’t think Ea-nāṣir intended to be a source of historical information, but Pepys did, and historians of his era are grateful for it, not because his life was uniquely interesting, but because much of it was quite mundane, and he wrote about it anyway.

So you, dear reader, should consider writing about your own life.

This is very much a case of “do as I say, not as I do”, because I have trouble making myself follow this advice, but that’s the case for “live like there’s no tomorrow”, too. My point is this: You matter. Your life matters. It matters in the sense that everyone deserves to have a good life, but also in the sense that you are a part of history. I think that’s an easier sell during a time of historical upheaval, but it would be true even if we lived in a nice, stable, boring era, if such a thing ever existed.

We don’t know what the future holds, but if it’s a future containing humanity, then some of us will be looking back and trying to tell the story of how we got there.

And for that your perspective matters as much as, if not more than, the perspectives of the rich and powerful people who are driving so many of the world’s problems. We are often taught history as “the biographies of great men”, but the reality is that history that cares about the truth tries to look beyond what the rich and powerful pay to have written about themselves. In that regard, I think you, whoever you are, are far more worth listening to than any of our rulers. They don’t understand what life is like in the world they’ve created.

You do.