“Too often memories die with their owner, and too often time surprises us by running out,” wrote one of our foremost authorities on memoir writing, William Zinsser.

Speaking candidly about the fact that we have a limited number of days on this Earth can be hard—no one wants to contemplate their death or jinx the happy times we’re living in right now. That’s why we come at it sideways sometimes—like with this quote that I often reference, again from Zinsser, because it inevitably—every time—elicits an emotional response:

“The saddest sentence I know is ‘I wish I had asked my mother about that.’”

That resonates with you, doesn’t it?

It is sad to think our mother’s—or father’s or grandparent’s—stories have died with them.

And one day your own kids will wish they had asked you for more: more stories, more details about your childhood, more names on the family tree. But it’s a simple fact that most times our children don’t value our stories until they are older; they don’t invite conversation about it now—but they will cherish them later.

That’s why it’s so important for you to begin recording your life stories now. Whether you write in a journal, work with a memoir coach, or share your memories during a series of personal history interviews, the time to begin is now.

• Don’t worry that you are too young—all your stories matter, and you can always write more later, when you’re older.

• Don’t worry that you haven’t lived your full life—we are all in the midst of our narrative, and reflecting upon your stories of the life you have lived thus far is worthwhile. “Every event, and certainly every event worth writing about, will always remain tattooed on our neurons. So it is never too early to start giving those events, which are our lives, a form,” Benjamin Moser has written. “It is a homage we pay ourselves. More solid than a memory, a memoir will outlast it, because until a memory is put into words, it remains mist, never shore.”

• Don’t worry that you don’t have enough time to write—there are ways to make the time for something as important as your life story.

• And don’t worry that you will have more perspective when you are older: “Of course someone will look back at his first broken heart with a different perspective at the age of 40, or 60, or 80. But that doesn’t mean that these perspectives are better, or that our self-­understanding travels toward some telos of perfect consummation with every passing year,” Leslie Jamison wrote. “The narratives we tell about our own lives are constantly in flux; our perspectives at each age are differently valuable. What age gains in remove it loses in immediacy: The younger version of a story gets told at closer proximity, with more fine-grain texture and less aerial perspective.”

So don’t risk not having the time to tell your stories. Preserve them now. As Zinsser suggests, “be a recording angel and record everything your descendants might want to know.” Starting…right now.