obituaries (and what will yours be)
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“You know the Greeks didn’t write obituaries, they only asked one question after a man died, ‘Did he have passion?’”
movie quote from Serendipity
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One morning I woke up thinking that if I ever came across my own obituary I, well, wouldn’t bother with it. it’s a sobering thought. the majority of my career, and life, I have helped people make money who didn’t actually need more money, found people who needed me who actually didn’t really need anybody like me and the best things I did well were things that those same people could pay someone else to do.
Well. And then I thought about the movie “Serendipity”. Wow. That was a transition, huh?
** note: The closing scene of Serendipity probably ranks in my top 5 “best use of music in a movie scene” rankings. It is absolutely the perfect use of Nick Drake’s Northern Sky.
My opening quote is actually when John Cusack’s buddy at the end of the movie says “The Greeks didn’t write obituaries. They only asked one question after a man died: Did he have passion?”
I loved it.
But me, being me, had to Google whether Greeks truly did write obituaries or not (because I found that thought to be fascinating and I wanted to be sure it want just some movie writer writing it).
Well.
It turns out that they did and didn’t. This is the philosophy of Aristippus of Cyrene (c. 435-356 B.C.) and
his grandson who were founders of the Cyrenaics. They were Greeks. But their philosophy didn’t represent all Greeks. So it was Greek but not all Greeks.
Regardless.
Back to obituaries and passion and, frankly, what if passion is missing in our life and what does that mean if anything meaningful at all.
In my mind passion rarely spontaneously ignites, it develops slowly and purposefully (despite what writers & poets and whomever want you to believe). It is not borne from nothing but rather from something. Because of that I believe you feel it most when you take time to consider the things in life (actions) that have meaning to you. Oh. I also believe that passion does not seek you out rather you discover passion thru a pursuit of things that are interesting to you.
Maybe the Greeks were on to something when they discussed respecting the cultivation of personal passion as important to living life to its fullest.
I guess this mean that accomplishment is empty if you reach a goal on technical skills alone.
Think about that.
And let’s think about this … and I will use my passion of teaching the next generation as an example.
If education is taught by rote, there is no passion only technical skill. So even if they “succeed”, where succeed is measured by making some grade, they have not accomplished anything because they have no passion.
Oh my.
That summarizes a lot of my thinking on education and the existing education system.
Ok.
But.
Back to obituaries.
And self-retrospection again as an example.
So if I were to die today would I be content with what my obituary will read?
I’m not sure that I can say yes at this moment. Oops. I lied. No. I wouldn’t be.
What’s missing?
I guess that’s the question that I’m going to have to answer at some point.
I imagine the answer resides somewhere in-between some unidentified-to-date issue in my past (forgiveness for what I may have done) or if the answer lies in the future (what I have yet to achieve).
And, yes, they are two edges of the same sword.
All I know for sure is that my obituary would be incomplete as of today.
But the value in thinking about it a bit now is once we all measure the words of our “today” obituary we begin to assess where do we go from here.
Sometimes we do things we can’t take back. And that’s that. What you have done is who you are (today).
But what you have done is not who you will be.
In my case it has been nearly 3,150 weeks. Uhm. And a traditional life is around 400 weeks. Whew. I better get going if I want to complete my obituary .
My point there, beyond the fact we don’t really have a shitload of time in a typical lifetime, is an obituary is not about what you can undo from what is done and moving on. Why? You don’t undo.
That, my friends, is a big thought if you are thinking in obituary terms.
Because a lot of people want to go back and fix or ‘undo.’
Once again.
You can’t.
That said. Obituaries are written when they are written and that means they are written with “what is” as the case and point.
My point? Unburden yourself from the past.
The good, the bad, the indifferent … none matter.
Write your obituary from today on.
Yeah.
The past cannot be changed, forgotten, edited, or erased. The truth is you can only accept it. Accept it and get to building what you want.
Here is a thought.
Maybe everyone should write your obituary after you read this post.
You may not like what you read.
You may only like parts of what you read.
Who cares?
You are alive.
You still have time to do something else that can get written.
So. Write the obituary you want beginning today.
I was thinking about the “passion” quote from Serendipity which led to Googling which led to your essay. Terrific job! I really enjoyed your thoughts and analysis. Also…I’ll admit to putting my man-card in jeopardy for a moment–loved the Nick Drake scene as well.
Well wishes,
John
thank you!!
Beautiful words and a very good analysis. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Same story here – chick flick, but entertaining and cleverly written – if you like O Henry contrivances. But I, too, was taken by the lines about the Greeks and epitaphs and afterward did the Google thing. Yeah, I thought so …
As for education, a quote often attributed to W B Yeats is fitting:
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.”
To bring this full circle and back to the Greeks, Yeats likely borrowed that line from Plutarch:
“For the correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.” Plutarch, from Ian Kidd’s translation of Essays.