Wouldn’t it be nice to hear one’s own eulogy while living? Beware what you wish for!
There are good reasons not to pre-pone eulogies. We have two words for what we write or say after someone has died: one Latin and one Greek.
The Latin-based wordrefers to the words spoken in honor of the deceased. An obituary is what we read in the morning paper; a eulogy is what we listen to during the funeral service. Either way, death has to come first; obituaries and eulogies come after. Why is this so?and regret.
Today I ask, would we regret giving or receiving a living eulogy? The short answer is, yes to both, we would. The normative prohibition is just too strong. One might infer that the eulogist wishes the eulogized to be dead.
, I see three interconnected reasons why we withhold eulogies from the living. First, a eulogy, by definition, must be positive. It is understood that a eulogy paints a biased picture of the deceased. It is part of the survivors’work.
A good eulogy captures the essence of the deceased person’s character, while not distorting it too much by omission. This benignis expected and rewarded. If such a eulogy were given to a living person, one might, in the best case, treat it as a great gift, a gift of almost immeasurable value. Gifts, as social scientists have long recognized, create debts .
The receiver is called upon to reciprocate. With a proper eulogy, this is neither expected nor possible; no debt is perceived as having been created. With an untimely early eulogy, the recipient is left saddled with a debt that cannot be paid. Once the first flush ofThe second reason is that a eulogy is marked by finality.
A deceased person’s life has become whole because nothing, neither good nor bad, can be added to it. Kahneman’s peak-end rule applies here. We remember episodes by their most intense emotional moments and by thewe have of a person counts. When the person is still alive, we cannot know what that memory will be, and without knowing that, a living eulogy may come undone by events that still lie in the future.
The third reason, which builds on the first two, is that the point of a eulogy is to capture the person as a whole, to reveal their essence, to show what they were all about, what marked and distinguished them. A premature eulogy might support the interpretation that the eulogized might as well die now, lest the eulogy is invalidated by further living. The normative regulation, which places eulogies on the far side of death, is not arbitrary.
It recognizes basic psychological dynamics, dynamics that cannot be condemned as irrational. There are some workarounds. Some individuals who have lived remarkable lives or who are known for significant achievements are publicly recognized, feted, and bedecked with medals. Speeches in their honor come close in tone to eulogies, but the good ones are careful not to elevate the entire person; instead, they focus on the specifics that led to the honor.
If this fails, and the laudatory speech sounds too much like a eulogy, the honoree may legitimately complain “I am not dead yet! I still have more to give. ”parties are most delicate because the freshly minted retiree does in fact make an exit from a life of active contribution.
Such parties are often bittersweet or come with an undertone of good-riddance, as aptly dramatized in the opening scenes of the movie with Jack Nicholson uncharacteristically featured in the role a man being humbled. Being told one ought to enjoy a life of fishing stirs up a metaphor close to being put out to pasture.
The living enjoy expressions of gratitude, and gratitude is best expressed from one person to another and focused on concrete deeds and modes of influence. There is a literature within theindustry that provides guidance on how to best deliver messages of gratitude . Timing and sincerity are important considerations. The challenge of sincerity is to avoid empty flattery.
Flattery is like junk food from the corner store: sweet and without nutritional value. Use This Word to Deepen Your Gratitude—It’s a Game Changer Good timing can take two forms. The first form is in the moment, when both parties realize that an important goal has been reached. Here, the grateful party can almost instinctively burst forth with an expression of gratitude.
A more calculated version of the in-the-moment variant is also serviceable, although the recognition of ritual shaves off a bit of the deeper sense of meaning. The second form is out-of-the-moment; it is seemingly random in time. The grateful party takes care to reflect on what the target of gratitude has done for them, what role they played in their development, what they taught. This last form of gratitude expression has tremendous power, but it is a neglected art.
It is here that we come close to a pre-mortem eulogy without the morbidity. Redelmeier, D. A., & Kahneman, D. . Patients’ memories of painful medical treatments: Real-time and retrospective evaluations of two minimally invasive procedures. The Best Ways to Begin AgainSelf Tests are all about you.
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