Have You Ever Thought About Your Funeral?

How do you want to be remembered?

In the opening principle of the late Stephen Covey bestseller, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, he lays out a template for habit 1: Begin with the end in mind.

This topic has since been used in many business planning agendas, it has been re-written to fit other criteria and has been obsessed over by many individuals, myself included.

Stephen Covey takes it one step further. He recommends that you write yourself a mission statement. He asks you to think about how you would like to be remembered at your funeral and to set this vision as your goal for how you approach everyday life. How you correspond, how you work, and how you love.

As morbid as it may be, it’s something that we should all consider in greater detail if we are looking for true fulfillment.

Some People Are Just Too Much For The World To Handle.

And so, the world finds a way to remove them sooner, leaving destruction in their wake (an example of fulfilment not considered)

Every once in a blue moon, you might get lucky and have the opportunity to meet an individual who shines so bright that they carry an aura wherever they go.

The consequence of the bright light is that it nearly always gets burned out far too soon.

I have experienced grief. Fortunately not with someone so immediately close to me that my heart is ripped out of my stomach and I am sure that many reading this will think that I’m speaking from inexperience.

I have however lost grandparents, friends, aunts, and uncles.

Of particular prominence was my Uncle Phil. He was one of those “Bright lights”. I have had to grieve over him relatively privately as his life (and death) was riddled with controversy.

He was present in my life the most during my early/mid-teens. His visits were infrequent and fleeting, yet always hugely memorable.

Whilst his death was as expected, a huge shock to the family, I felt selfishly upset yet very unsurprised and if anything in awe of his ability to live his life as if the next day may be his last.

He lived a total personal rollercoaster. Three marriages and three sets of children spanning three continents. A stint in the armed forces, drugs, and rock music, owner of an IT business, central London city dweller to major gambler in Cali Columbia. A true comedian with many a story to tell.

The one part I never understood was that under all the bravado, sadness was instilled in the veins of my Uncle Phil. A depression that he kept from public view, which of course was eventually the death of him.

He passed at the tender age of 57.

Before I witnessed his life and death, I was under the naivety that lives of that caliber were for the people that have the money and power to live it. E.g celebrities, politicians, major business people, and footballers. An example is the infamous “27 Club”. From the outside looking in, I was always given the impression that financial success supported the spiraling, wild nature of these types of people.

Uncle Phil taught me that actually, they live amongst all of us. Some people seemingly just have scalable different tolerance levels of risk than others. It’s probably just the case that there is a finite number that breaks into the public eye.

None of us got to mourn Uncle Phil. He died in Columbia and to have him moved was not feasible. There was no funeral and my family was all relatively disconnected. This happened in 2014 and to this day, it surprises me that we don’t speak of him more. We all remember him, yet he’s too difficult to talk about. No one ever really said goodbye.

With that, just in the way he lived his life, shrouded in mystery and controversy, it was only fitting for it to end the same way.

I am proud to have known him.

The Lessons Since Learned

Whilst Uncle Phil inspired my creativity and gave me a real buzz of confidence in life. I have learned that I can’t live the way he did.

The truth is that time is ticking for all of us.

I do not want you to believe that the personality described above is equivalent to greatness. I have a reasonable moral compass and I know that greatness is my wife’s late grandfather running around after his family until the end of his life out of no reason other than sheer love and passion. Greatness is the beautiful life and home that my grandparents created, my grandfather being an incredible craftsman and them living a beautiful family dream world until their sad passing within a year of each other, only a few years ago.

Greatness in life is so vastly different to different people. On a personal level, if my wife and children have a happy life, I will have succeeded. This is also a different view to young and impressionable me from my early 20s.

With this in mind, I am doing my up-most in my own life to combine the important elements of both of these lifestyles.

In my humble opinion, family comes first. That’s imperative. Yet, so do principles.

I have created a fantastic career for myself which I’m keen to expand and build on, plus branch off into different directions. I want to do this in aid of providing a roof and food for my family, however also to keep my life busy and my brain engaged.

It would be good to influence change, even on a small scale. This is in fatherhood, in the environment, in the industry that I work in.

It would also be good to experience long-term health and acceptable wealth.

I want to coach and develop my children to their own successes. I want to be there for them for better or for worse and I want them to lead a happy life. This means giving them time and attention.

Life is a balancing act. Too much of a single good thing, or for that matter a single bad thing, will catch up with you in the end. Obsessing over my work would be the death of my marriage. Neglecting my work would also be the death of my marriage.

So how do I want to be remembered at my funeral?

I want to have that incredible flare that my uncle Phil had. I want to have been seen to have lived in the most fulfilling way I could have done. Yet I also want to be remembered as a good dad and a caring husband, as well as a useful and exemplary employee. I want to be remembered as caring about the wider world and nature and having a liberal political view, contributing to a progressive society.

I want to have inspired.

Now I urge you to ask yourself the same question.

Once you know the answer, how will you achieve it?