14.8 — Writing Your Own Epitaph

This is the only assignment in this volume, and it takes about two hours.

It is worth doing because everything in Part 14 has been circling one problem: the fact that it ends is known to you and is not operating on your decisions.

And the traditions all say the same thing about that. The Yaksha's greatest wonder (3.10). The ash (7.9). Memento mori (10.5). Gilgamesh's wall (11.8).

None of them worked by argument. They worked by making a person do something.

Why this exercise rather than another

Because it inverts the direction.

Ordinary planning runs forward: here is where I am, what should I do next? And it inherits every assumption you currently hold, including the ones that are wrong.

This runs backwards: here is the end, what has to be true for it, what does that require now?

And working backwards from a fixed end point exposes things forward planning cannot, because forward planning has no forcing constraint and this does.

Part one: the eulogy

Two hours, alone, on paper (14.6 first, if possible — the material arrives better after twenty minutes of quiet).

Write what you would want said about you, by three specific people, at your funeral.

**Not what you would want to have achieved. What you would want them to say about what you were like.

Pick three real people:

Somebody who has known you your whole life — a sibling, an old friend, a parent.

Somebody you live with or love now.

And somebody who worked with you but was never close — a colleague, somebody junior to you, somebody you managed.

Write a paragraph in each voice.

What usually happens

Three things, reported consistently by people who do this.

Almost nothing you wrote is about achievement. People do not write "he hit the targets." They write about how somebody was to be around, whether they were reliable, whether they were kind, whether they made things easier or harder.

And your calendar is not organised around any of it.

The third voice is the informative one. What somebody who was not close would say is a description of your default behaviour — how you treat people when there is nothing at stake — and that is a more accurate account of your character than the first two.

And you will find one thing you are frightened they would actually say. Write that down separately. It is the most useful sentence you will produce.

Part two: the ten-word version

Reduce it to ten words.

Not a slogan. A description that would be recognised as accurate by people who know you.

And the reduction is where the work happens, because you have to decide what is actually load-bearing.

Examples of the right shape: He was reliable, and he was kind to people below him. She told the truth and made room for people. He was there. Every time. For thirty years.

Part three: the gap

Three columns.

Column one: what the eulogy says.

Column two: what somebody observing your last three months would actually write.

Column three: the specific behaviour that closes the gap.

And column three must be a behaviour (13.4, 13.8) — checkable, in a specific recurring situation, this week.

Not "be more present with my children." I put the phone in a drawer between six and seven and it stays there.

Part four: the four questions

And these are the ones that produce the most, from the whole of Part 14.

Who would I regret not having spoken to? (14.2, and 3.18's Kunti, whose secret was survivable at every point until it was irrelevant.)

Name them. Then put a date in the calendar.

What am I postponing until things settle down? (6.2.) Things do not settle down. The filling is not a temporary condition.

What would I stop doing today if I knew I had two years? And the follow-up that matters: why am I doing it now?

And which of the five is lowest? (14.4.) Relationships, contribution, difficulty, coherence, transcendence. Work on the lowest, not the easiest.

Part five: the arrangements

Unglamorous, and it dissolves more fear than any philosophy on this page (14.2).

Tell one person what you want — medically, and afterwards.

Write the will.

Write the letter. To the people who would need one. It does not have to be good.

Make sure the people who depend on you have other people.

And ask one person the same questions. **Your parents, if they are alive. The conversation is uncomfortable for about ninety seconds and then it is not, and almost everybody who has had it reports relief on both sides.

The annual version

Once a year, an hour.

Re-read the eulogy. Re-read the code (13.8).

Ask: is this still what I want said, and is the gap narrower than last year?

And the honest expectation: the gap narrows slowly and unevenly, and the value is not in closing it. It is in knowing where it is, which is the difference between a life that is being steered and one that is being carried.

What this Part established

Eight chapters, and this is the account.

The traditions are incompatible on what happens when you die and nearly identical on what to do about it (14.1). Which tells you which half has been tested.

The fear is five fears and three of them have practical answers (14.2).

Grief has no stages, the oscillation is functional, the relationship continues, and the life grows around it rather than the grief shrinking (14.3).

Meaning is relationships, contribution, difficulty, coherence and belonging — and it behaves like a floor, so work on the lowest (14.4).

Suffering mostly has no reason, no tradition relieves it by explaining it, and a large part of the total is the second arrow (14.5).

The work gets done alone, on the second day, when the queue has cleared (14.6).

Forgiveness is one of five things people mean by it, requires nothing from the other person, and should not be extended to an ongoing harm (14.7).

And the fact that it ends is known to you and is not currently operating on your decisions, which is what this chapter is for.

What to carry from this page

Write the three paragraphs. **Two hours. The third voice is the one that tells you about your character.

Write down the thing you are frightened they would say.

Column three is a behaviour, this week, checkable.

Name who you would regret not having spoken to, and put a date on it.

And have the conversation with your parents while it is possible. Ninety seconds of discomfort, and then relief on both sides, and 4.7's instruction: go back once, on purpose, while it is still available.

Next: Part 15 turns to the question that has been deferred all volume — where science and the contemplative traditions honestly meet, and where the claims made on their behalf are not honest.