Do you want your obituary to come true?

OK, I have to admit, this post could almost be classified as being stolen but it wasn't, really.

Anyway, I was talking to my wife this morning as we were both getting prepared to hit the business world. This seems to be one of our best times to just talk about "things", usually nothing of great importance, sort of a warm up session. She was telling me about a woman, I don't know any real particulars except that this happened on the "Oprah" show. The reason she mentioned it to me was because of the content and the conversation we were having prior. I was saying that I couldn't understand why an obituary which was more of a biography rather than service information was so important to so many people. That's when she told me.

The reason I said stolen earlier is because this is second hand information and I could be messing up some of the particulars. If any of you can point them out if I do, I'd appreciate it. OK, this woman was telling everyone that she and her husband at one time both worked, had high paying careers, lived rather large. She went on to say that out of the blue one day she decided that she was going to write her obituary. She wrote it in past tense (of course) through the eyes of a 70 year old. She said that once she had written it she realized that she had included things that were not part of her current life yet upon consideration, wanted them to be. She said this was a life altering experience for her. After reading the obituary which spoke of children, grandchildren and love of family and friends, she recognized that this was not the path her life was taking. A decision was made at that point to leave her career, spend more time with her children or more time making them, I'm not sure which, and really becoming a good friend to the "friends" she already had; she updates it when new accomplishments occur. Now granted, leaving ones job is not something that many of us can just do on a whim but the rest of it sounds pretty doable.

Funny how this exercise opened her eyes to a means to fulfill a fantasy. In the past I have thought obituaries that were flowery and overly descriptive were just too much. They may still be, but, I've decided that I'm going to try this exercise myself and write my own obituary. Perhaps this is a good way of foreseeing what you want for your future and might even offer up a way to fulfill that want. I'm going to give it a shot and maybe you should too. Who knows.