📚 A Bookish Chat with 'The Relative Unimportance of It All' Tony Setley #AuthorInterview

Today we welcome Tony Setley to The Writer's Life e-Magazine! Tony is the author of the new contemporary philosophy book, The Relative Unimportance of It All, and this interview is part of his Blog Tour by Pump Up Your Book. Enjoy!

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:

╰┈➤ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TonySetley

╰┈➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tonysetley/

Your book, The Relative Unimportance of It all, is a beautifully honest book that questions why we chase meaning and what’s left when we stop. Where did you get the idea to write this book?

I kept coming back to how much pressure there is to do something important with your life. Even when things are going reasonably well, there’s this feeling that you ought to be accomplishing more. We’ve made “leave a legacy” sound like a perfectly ordinary expectation to place on a human being. As I entered middle-age, I think it was a expectation and question that was nagging at me for explanation.

You said, “Time naturally levels everything.” What did you mean by that?

Given enough time, the distinctions we spend our lives worrying about become very difficult to see. Who had the more impressive job? Who was admired? Who got overlooked? Those things can feel enormous while we’re living through them. Eventually, almost everyone involved is forgotten. I think we have to be honest about that.

By letting go of the obsession to constantly change the world, you say you have finally given yourself permission to live in it. How mind-blowing is that? Do you live by this philosophy?

I try, although understanding an idea certainly doesn’t mean you remember it whenever you need it. I still want to accomplish things. But there’s a difference between caring about what you’re doing and making the outcome a judgment on your whole life. What I’m trying to let go of is the constant need to establish my importance. That makes it easier to enjoy something without asking what it’s getting me, or to do useful work without needing recognition for it.

How long did it take you to write your book?

It took me approximately 1.5 months to write the book. It's written in the style of a philosophical essay so much less leg work than an academic work.

Your background is positively interesting. How long have you been a pastor?

11 years

What is the main message or feeling you hope readers take away from your book?

I hope they feel a little less pressure to justify their lives. So much of what we do gets evaluated in terms of where it will lead or what it says about us. It becomes difficult to enjoy anything on its own terms. Even rest can feel like something we have to defend. I’d like readers to become more willing to recognize the value of what they’re already experiencing. That also includes recognizing what other people are experiencing. Someone doesn’t have to play a significant role in your life for you to owe them consideration.
There’s some relief in that, and also a responsibility. You can stop worrying quite so much about whether you matter and give more attention to how you’re living.

Thank you for this interview, Tony. What’s next for you?

I’m working on my Doctor of Ministry degree and still settling into life as a newer Florida resident. Between that, work and family, there’s plenty going on. For this book, I’m looking forward to hearing where readers agree with me and where they push back. These are questions people bring their own experiences to, and I’m interested in that conversation.

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