What if almost everything you have been told about living an important life begins with the wrong question?
The Relative Unimportance of It All: and Why Everything Matters Anyway begins with an unsettling observation: given enough time, nearly everything human beings consider important will disappear. Fame fades, accomplishments are forgotten, institutions collapse, and even the most influential people eventually become little more than names—or vanish from memory altogether. Rather than resisting that reality with promises of legacy or permanence, the book takes it seriously. It argues that the mistake of nihilism is not recognizing that everything is temporary, but assuming that something must last forever in order to have mattered while it existed.
From there, the book shifts the question of meaning away from historical importance and toward lived experience. Every human being encounters life from within a present moment, whether emperor or laborer, celebrity or stranger. That equality of experience becomes the foundation for an ethic of “attentive goodness”: taking seriously the reality of the people and circumstances directly before us. The argument is applied to ordinary life, family, work, pleasure, suffering, loss, ambition, and attention. It does not claim that every action has equal consequences or that every moral choice is equivalent; rather, it distinguishes between the equal reality of persons and the very real differences in need, responsibility, harm, and consequence.
Ultimately, the book embraces the paradox contained in its title: from the perspective of vast stretches of time, very little about our lives may be important, and yet that does not make the lives being lived now meaningless. We do not need to become historically significant before the present deserves our attention. We can love, work, create, strive, enjoy, grieve, and act with goodness precisely because these experiences are real while they occur.
The Relative Unimportance of It All: And Why Everything Matters Anyway is available at Amazon.
╰┈➤Book Details
✦ Title: The Relative Unimportance of It All: And Why Everything Matters Anyway
✦ Author: Tony Setley
✦ Genre: Philosophy
✦ Sub-genre: Contemporary Philosophy
✦ Language: English
✦ Pages: Paperback 250, Digital 151
✦ Paperback ISBN: 979-8192127988
✦ Publisher: Independent
✦ Publication Date: August 11, 2026
✦ Price: Hardcover $19.86, Paperback $12.42, Kindle $4.99, Audiobook FREE with Membership Trial, Kindle FREE with Kindle Unlimited
“You are unlikely to change the course of history. You will almost certainly not become famous. Your name will not be remembered centuries from now, nor will your accomplishments occupy more than a passing line in the long account of humanity, if they appear at all. Whatever you build, someone else will inherit. Whatever you earn will eventually belong to another. Whatever reputation you cultivate will fade with those who knew you. There will come a day when, for the last time, someone speaks your name aloud. After that, silence.
This is not pessimism. It is arithmetic. This realization has led many thoughtful people to a bleak conclusion. If time eventually erases every distinction—between the celebrated and the anonymous, the wealthy and the poor, the conqueror and the laborer—then perhaps the distinctions were never meaningful in the first place. If oblivion is the final destination, why should anything matter before it arrives?” (From Prologue)
– Excerpted from The Relative Unimportance of It All: And Why Everything Matters Anyway by Tony Setley, Independent, 2026. Reprinted with permission.
If you’ve ever had a perfectly decent day and still gone to bed thinking you should have done more with your life, you’ll recognize the problem I’m writing about. That feeling can follow us through work, time with family, and even the things we’re supposed to enjoy. I wanted to ask where it comes from and whether we have to keep accepting its judgment.
2. It opens with a history question most of us can’t answer.
3. You can read it and still want the promotion.
You can still want to write a good book, build something useful, or get better at your work. I’m interested in what happens when a goal becomes responsible for your entire sense of worth. That’s a lot to ask of a promotion. The book makes room for ambition while questioning why success so often feels like something we need in order to be okay with ourselves.
4. It asks some uncomfortable questions about family.
One is whether calling our children our “legacy” gives them a job they never asked for. They have their own lives to live. What changes if we love them without needing them to preserve something of us? I think that question can help us become more interested in the people our families actually are, including when they don’t behave the way we imagined.
5. It doesn’t expect you to find the bright side of everything.
There are chapters about suffering and loss, and I take those seriously. Some experiences hurt without making us wiser. Some things cannot be repaired. I don’t think people should have to produce an uplifting lesson before their pain deserves attention. Any account of why life matters has to make room for the days when being alive is difficult.
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The Rev. Tony Setley is a Lutheran pastor, author, chaplain, football coach, and public philosopher. His professional ministry has included congregational, military, campus, and federal law-enforcement chaplaincy. He holds degrees from Lebanon Valley College and the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg. He is currently pursuing a Doctor of Ministry degree with a focus on preparing chaplains to help those dealing with moral injury. His writing explores the intersection of philosophy, theology, and ordinary human experience. He lives in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, with his wife and son.
Tony’s latest book is The Relative Unimportance of It All: And Why Everything Matters Anyway.
Connect with him on social media at:
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╰┈➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tonysetley/
