Should you live your life for your Resume or your Eulogy
Most people have this question that which has greater importance in your life- resume or eulogy.
Resume virtues are the ones that we put on our resume- they are the skills you bring to the marketplace. Eulogy virtues are the skills that get mentioned in your eulogy. They are deeper- who are you, in your depth; what is the nature of your relationships, are you bold, loving, dependable?
Most of us would say that eulogy virtues are more important to their virtues. But in most cases, are they the ones you think about the most? The answer is no.
Joseph Soloveitchik, who wrote a book called “The Lonely Man of Faith” in 1965 said that there are two sides to our natures. He called the two sides Adam I and Adam II. Adam I was a worldly, ambitious, external side of our nature. He wanted to build, create and innovate. On the other hand, Adam II was the humble side of our nature; he wants not only to do good but also to be good, to live in a way internally that honors God, creation, and our possibilities. Adam I asks how things work, Adam II asks why we’re here. Adam I’s motto is a success, Adam II’s motto is love, redemption and return.
Soloveitchik argued that the two sides of our nature are at war with each other and that we lived in a constant perpetual self-confrontation between success and internal value.
The two sides work by different logics by different logics. The external logic is an economic logic, input leads to output, risks lead to rewards.
The internal side of our nature is a moral logic and is often an inverse logic — that you have to give to receive,you have to surrender to something outside yourself to gain strength within yourself,you have to conquer the desire to get what you want; that in order to find yourself, you have to be yourself.
We happen to be in a society that favors Adam I and often neglects Adam II. And the problem is, that turns you into a shrewd animal who treats life as a game and you become a cold, calculating creature who slips into a sort of mediocrity where you realize there is a difference between your desired self and your actual self. You’re not earning the sort of eulogy you want, you hope that somebody will give it to you. You don’t have the depth of conviction. You don’t have an emotional sonorousness. You don’t commit to tasks that will take more than a lifetime to commit.
Through history, people have often gone back into their pasts, sometimes to a precious time in their life, perhaps to their childhood and often the mind gravitates in the past to a moment of shame, some sin committed,some act of omission or shallowness,the sin of anger,the sin of self pity,trying to be a people’s person,a lack of courage.
Adam I is built by building on your strengths. Adam II is built by fighting your weaknesses.
You go into yourself, you find the sin which you have committed over and over again through your life, your signature sin out of which the others emerge. Then you fight that sin and out of the fighting, that suffering, then a depth of character is constructed.
As we are often not taught to recognize the sin in ourselves, and we are not taught to fight it, how to confront it and how to control it. We live in a culture an Adam I mentality, where we are inarticulate about Adam II.
Finally, Reinhold Neibuhr summed up the confrontation between the fully lived Adam I and Adam II this way:
Nothing in life worth doing can be achieved in your lifetime, therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history, therefore we must be saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone, therefore we must be saved by love.No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friends or foe as from our standpoint. Therefore, we must be saved by that final form of love which is forgiveness.
