In his 1956 work “An Arundel Tomb”, the poet Philip Larkin describes his reaction to seeing a pair of recumbent medieval stone effigies, identified (though inconclusively) as those of Richard FitzAlan, 10th Earl of Arundel (died 1376) and his second wife, Eleanor of Lancaster (died 1372):

Larkin’s last verse—above all his last line—is well-known, though not so straightforward as it might first appear:

Did this couple wish to be remembered as being in love? It certainly seems possible, if not even likely. But reading the poem as a whole, Larkin seems to be saying that what later generations choose to see as love may be what survives.

We don’t know what this couple intended with their final gesture. We interpret it as love because it’s human nature to see it as such. I myself interpret it that way. But the basic point remains: whatever the original intent, what survives is love.

And so it is with luxury pieces. If they survive, it will be because of love, and in fact it’s love that will survive.

I’ll use luxury timepieces here as my exemplar because it seems to be so common that their purchase is justified—typically, one assumes, to spouses and/or financial advisers—on the basis that what’s being bought is an heirloom.

People buy or are given their first luxury timepiece for many reasons: graduation, first job, birthday, marriage, promotion, childbirth, retirement. The list goes on. Whatever the reason, it’s often—if not typically—an event that’s deeply meaningful to the owner. And it’s typically an event that involves some sort of love.

Then there’s the luxury timepiece as a companion during your most memorable moments. James Cameron is famously known for having worn a Rolex Submariner during his career as a director, from the set of Terminator 2: Judgment Day in 1991…

…to the set of Titanic in 1996…

…and then at the Academy Awards in 1998, with one of the three Oscars he personally received out of the eleven Titanic received overall.

I think of those moments—the moments we celebrate through buying our first luxury timepiece, and the moments we celebrate while wearing it—as another form of love. The watch as beloved companion.

But those dramatic moments aren’t the only kind of love—not by a long shot. There’s the quotidian version of love. Cooking dinner for your spouse, or cleaning up after they cooked for you. Making the bed for them in the morning when they’re in a rush. Taking their car in for an oil change. Those are forms of love, too, and they apply equally to luxury timepieces.

A mechanical watch isn’t an impermeably sealed object that merely need be worn or wound on a regular basis and will run forever without intervention. Mechanical watches require adjustments—the more accurate the watch, the less frequent the adjustment, but required nonetheless.

Mechanical watches also require maintenance. How often that maintenance occurs depends on the maker, the watch, how often it’s worn, and under what circumstances. If you actually wear your dive watch to, well, dive, then you’ll probably be taking it in every year or so to have the seals checked. If you wear your dress watch to dinner once a week, your first service might not be for five to eight years. No matter what, though, maintenance will be required.

My point is that all of this—the dramatic reasons we acquire our first luxury watches, the dramatic moments for which they accompany us, and then the care we show to them over the years through adjustments and maintenance—all of this is love in one form or another.

You want to buy an heirloom watch? Presuming it’s the watch you truly want, and you can afford it, I think that’s a great idea. But you don’t buy an heirloom watch.

An heirloom isn’t something you buy; it’s what something becomes.

How, then, does a luxury item become an heirloom?