We are the product of a long lineage that has soothed its existential discomfort by envisioning that we leave a mark. And the more lasting the mark, the more indelible its imprint, the more a life seems to be a life that mattered. In the words of philosopher Robert Nozick—but they could just as easily have come from George Bailey—“Death wipes you out…To be wiped out completely, traces and all, goes a long way toward destroying the meaning of one’s life.”7
