“Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That’s when I will be truly dead – when I exist in no one’s memory. I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people. When that person dies, the whole cluster dies, too, vanishes from the living memory. I wonder who that person will be for me. Whose death will make me truly dead?” — Irvin D. Yalom, Love’s Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy

Love’s Executioner is one of my all-time favourite books, a beautiful read lifting the veil and opening the door to the enigmatic psychotherapy encounter.

Yalom’s words here offer such a profound reflection on memory, legacy, and the inescapable reality of death. They touch on the existential dilemma that many of us face at some point: What does it mean to be remembered? And what happens when we’re not? And how do we grapple with the thought of ultimate (eventual) annihilation?

In existential counselling, we often explore these deeper concerns—our fears of being forgotten, the meaning we ascribe to our lives, and how we make peace with our mortality. Yalom’s insight reminds us that part of our human experience is grappling with this impermanence, and it’s through these reflections that we find purpose; it is only them that we may truly embody authenticity.

This quote also underscores the importance of relationships. While we’re alive, the connections we foster with others are what sustain our existence in the world, even after we’re gone. By acknowledging the impermanence of our relationships, we are reminded of their value, and this can bring us closer to what really matters—how we choose to live now, how we impact others, and how we leave our mark in this world.

What are your thoughts on Yalom’s reflections on memory and mortality? How do you make peace with this idea of impermanence in your own life? If you haven’t read Yalom yet, I highly recommend that you do. He’s written twenty books alone, not including his publications and research, and I haven’t come across a dud sentence yet!