Wake Up Tiger: Are You Living Your Résumé or Your Eulogy?

The hypothesis being that living your eulogy is superior and living your resume is a failure. Maybe we are just doing eulogies wrong. Maybe eulogies should not be about “how human” the deceased was.

It may not be

His crowning achievement was when he made Sales Director.

but rather

he strived and dreamed of becoming Sales Director, and he had enough gumption to actually make it.

maybe it shouldn’t be:

We especially remember him as a person who had a MBA.

but maybe it should be:

He had an awesome education and put it to good use.

Maybe we should rethink how we do eulogies. I for one am rather sick of going to funerals and hearing what a great human the deceased was, when he was a complete tosser and a waste of oxygen. Maybe we should hold eulogies about the impact the person had on their surroundings rather than nice sounding platitudes.

It’s very easy to claim it may be a better world if we all went after the platitudes, but it would be a desperately depressing world as well. I would rather celebrate someone for being an inspiring asshat than a depressing good human being.