Thinking about your own funeral...

The man who funded the Nobel prize foundation was named, surprisingly enough, Alfred Nobel. He made his fortune improving the explosion power of dynamite.

One day, his brother died, and the paper in Stockholm, Sweden made an error and thought it was Alfred who had passed away. This gave Alfred the unique opportunity to read his own obituary before he died.

What dismayed him is that the newspaper gave him credit for making it more efficient and cost-effective to kill people through his invention. This prompted him to do something good with his money and hence, the Nobel Prizes.

I don't know what got me started on this train of the thought the other day, but I was thinking about my own funeral. About 6 months ago, I attended the funeral of one of our family's closest friends and there were hundreds of people there. Many of them, well beyond his immediate/nuclear family, were in tears. This was a man who obviously had touched many, many lives.

I fast-forwarded the movie of my life and started wondering...who would make the effort to attend my funeral? Would people outside of my inner circle cry for my departure?

Thinking about this metric as a guideline for my behavior on a daily basis is transformative.

Some of the conclusions I reached, however, dismayed me. I'm probably not at the people crying per capita ratio that I might like.

On the other hand, you could argue that this may not be a worthwhile standard to measure your contribution. Certainly a subject for debate.