I wrote a eulogy for myself at the age of 18 … and here’s why.
I was at a standstill point during Christmas break my freshman year of college. I was deciding what to do with my life, and I had no idea who I was. I met up with a high school friend for breakfast to talk. We had always confided in each other, and he suggested something that day that changed how I live.
He told me to write my own eulogy — an odd idea, I thought. I was 18 … thinking about dying is depressing, right? It’s when we need to think about living. His explanation changed my mind and, in turn, changed my life.
He said to think about what I want my family, friends, and coworkers to remember about me when I die. Then, put it into words. Write what you hope to be for those people in particular, things you imagine doing for them, and what you want to mean to them.
I just found mine in a journal, and it still remains very personal to me. However, in it I did say I wanted to be remembered for loving my family unconditionally and that I worked to always provide for them. Also, that I was always smiling.
I started to piece together the things I was doing now and seeing how they correlated to the things I wanted to be remembered for — or how they didn’t — were the words I said yesterday the ones I would want to be known for tomorrow … or in 20 years?
It was a turning point for the actions I have.
The thing is that we never know when someone might actually have to write one of those for us. We want to picture ourselves in the casket as old and wrinkly, a long life fulfilled, but that isn’t always the case. Sometimes, we go into one without wrinkles, with dreams unfulfilled, with a future gone too soon. Tomorrow, 10 years, 60 ... you never know when it will come.
That’s why I decided then to align my eulogy with my life right now. I am not trying to live this way just so that someone would one day say these words about me, but so that I could actually be someone deserving of them one day. These aren’t even things I necessarily think will be said when the day comes. The things I put in there were goals I set for myself. The type of attitude I want to have about everything, what kind of work I want to be doing, the family values I hope to have instilled.
Don’t live for the words you want to be said, live so that even while you are alive, people will have no choice but to speak kindly of you — or not at all. Let your actions be ones that, when you are at the end, you can look back and be proud of. Death doesn’t always have to be on your mind in order to live like there’s not much left. It is an attitude you can adapt, a person you can become that doesn’t take a day for granted, and becomes who they aspire to be day by day, one step at a time.
