I received a lot of wonderful gifts this holiday season. One of the most meaningful is a journal my son gave me, Dad, I Want to Hear Your Story. He might have noticed that I’ve been thinking a lot about legacy and things we leave behind, especially as we enter turbulent times.

If we’re heading towards some kind of apocalypse, I know people like me typically don’t survive one. I might wind up with my DNA commingled with tens of thousands of others in some unmarked pit. All that may remain of my existence is a name in a registry in some bureaucrat’s office. That’s why I want to leave behind a record that survives if I don’t. I want people to know what it was like to live through this time. More importantly, I want to remind them we were not numbers, like the six million of my distant cousins in Europe and the millions more who perished with them. We existed, we were human, and our lives mattered.

We can’t talk about ourselves and our legacy without being accused of main character syndrome. We know the world doesn’t revolve around us, like the sun doesn’t revolve around the Earth. Still, we talk about the sun and moon rising and setting. We perceive planets going in retrograde when they’re just following their orbit. Because we are a consciousness in a physical body, we can’t help but see the world from our point of view. And our point of view is just as valid—and valuable—as anyone else’s.

Preserving that point of view isn’t just an act of ego-stroking. Others can learn from our history. Think of how much we learn about the past from diaries, personal narratives, recipes, photographs, and video and audio recordings. We learn about people’s day-to-day living, their hopes and fears, and their perspective on major events. Those stories bring history to life and give a voice to those who weren’t listened to when they were alive.

I touch on the value of personal history in my novels, such as Christina’s Portrait (which itself is my attempt to share a perspective on my own past). It is discussed in this scene:

“But isn’t history about great men doing great things at great events?”

She shook her head and smiled. “History is a story we tell ourselves about ourselves. Where we came from. Why things are the way they are. What we had to overcome and what we have to learn.”

A problem with preserving history is most of our records for the past few decades are digital. This technology becomes obsolete or unreadable in a matter of years. I have floppy disks of personal journals I wrote in the 1980s and 1990s, but I don’t have the hardware to read them. Videotapes degrade over time. And with paper records, you need to save them where they can’t be lost or destroyed.

That’s why I bought a time capsule. Our house is turning 50 years old, and this is a fun family project to commemorate the event. We can write letters to future generations, print out family photos, save a copy of one of my books, and put a USB stick with videos and digital records for future technicians to reconstruct. We’ll then bury it somewhere in our yard. This time capsule is supposed to be waterproof and airtight for 200 years. Some future resident of our home in 2224 can dig up this time capsule and get a glimpse of life at the beginning of the second quarter of the 21st century.

Preserving your legacy is life-affirming. It declares your life has value, and you have something positive to leave to the world. You can contribute to the history of this time. And if the worst happens, your glimpses of the past can offer survivors encouragement to rebuild.

History may be written by the winners, but each of us has a story to tell. Don’t pass on the opportunity to tell your part of the tale.