So while you should most definitely be impressed by the fact that I can eat an entire pint of ice cream in under 20 minutes, that doesn't define who I am--a person who often uses humor to deflect very serious and vulnerable moments. I digress.
I want to leave you with
this thought provoking article I shared in an old newsletter. Arianna Huffington asks, “Have you noticed that when people die, their eulogies celebrate life very differently from the way we define success in our everyday existence?”
The eulogy is the foundational document of our legacy, of how people remember us, of how we live on in the minds and hearts of others. And it is very telling what you don't hear in eulogies. You almost never hear things like:
"Of course his crowning achievement was when he made senior vice president."
Or:
"What everybody loved most about her was how she ate lunch at her desk. Every day."
Or:
"He was proud that he never made it to one of his kid's Little League games because he always wanted to go over those figures one more time."
Or:
"She didn't have any real friends, but she had 600 Facebook friends, and she dealt with every email in her inbox every night."
Or:
"But he will live on, not in our hearts or memories, because we barely knew him, but in his PowerPoint slides, which were always meticulously prepared."
Anyone with a few smartphones and a full email inbox knows that it's easy to live while not being aware we're living. "I'm always relieved when someone is delivering a eulogy and I realize I'm listening to it," joked George Carlin. We may not be listening to our own eulogy, but we're actually writing it all the time, every day. The question is how much we're giving the eulogizer to work with.
So powerful.
