The Eulogy You're Writing Now
The difference between accomplishments and a life well lived
Listen here.
“You'll never see a U-Haul behind a hearse. I don't care how much money you have or what level of notoriety you've achieved; you can't take any of it with you.”
—Denzel Washington
A few years ago, my boss reminded the team to use our vacation time. Under our PTO policy, you stop accruing once you hit 150% of your annual total. One colleague — the one with the most time banked — pumped his fist and said, “Yes, I win!”
I laughed. But the image that immediately came to mind wasn’t a trophy. It was that U-Haul that Denzel mentioned.
You know this in your mind, but do your actions show that you can’t take any of it with you? Not the vacation days, the 401k, the lake house, or the record collection. And yet, for much of my life, I didn’t stop to think about that. I was too busy chasing things I thought would bring fulfillment.
Author David Brooks draws a distinction between resume virtues and eulogy virtues. Resume virtues are what we talk about in life — where we work, what we’ve accomplished, the trophies on the shelf. Eulogy virtues are what gets said when we’re gone — who we were, how we loved, the relationships that defined our time here.
I spent a long time building the resume. Now I’m trying to build the eulogy.
That shift is what I mean when I think about legacy. Not what you leave in a will, but what you leave in people.
I think about my high school band director, Pat Ellison. She was relentless about excellence — her bands won every top award — but what made her special wasn’t the trophies. It was the way she cared for her students. She saw things in us we couldn’t see in ourselves, and she went out of her way, year after year, to show us that we mattered.1
That is legacy. That is the stuff of significance.
Actress Viola Davis captured it in her tribute to Cicely Tyson:
“There is a cap on earthly success, a ceiling on the amount of joy that possessions and awards can bring before disillusionment sets in. Our appearance, our prosperity, the applause: all of it is so fleeting. But a life of true significance has unlimited impact. It is measured in how well we’ve loved those around us, how much we’ve given away, how many seeds we’ve sown along our path.”
Pat Ellison passed away in 2021. She remains one of my heroes.2
Do you want your life to have unlimited impact? There’s won’t be a trailer hitch on the back of your hearse. Cast off what doesn’t matter and start building your legacy now.
See you next Sunday.
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She also convinced Susanna to go on a date with me!