In one of the classes I taught this week, I said I’ve learned that we must move from resume virtues to legacy virtues. People wanted to know what I meant. There was a great discussion. We all know that resumes are marketing documents that have been sanitized to give the best impression possible. Where not telling the whole truth is an art form. Legacy is about what is left after you are gone. How people remember you. Not what you intended but your residual reputation. So legacy virtues are the deepest values that you live by. To be the best human you can be.

Resumes use external standards to prove goodness. Versus using your internal standards to define goodness. 

One is artificial and the other is authentic.

Most often obituaries and eulogies are the life ending resumes. A best of collection of attributes and accomplishments. Too often a plethora of purchased virtuous deeds. Occasionally I have seen very well written obituaries that capture nuances and foibles alongside the achievements. But usually these documents and speeches are highlight reels for the fan base. And when you know the person well, you hope the people speaking will celebrate the total person who was complicated, vulnerable, fragile and imperfect. But we usually don’t. It is just too hard. Our resumes. obituaries and eulogies are highly curated versions of what we want people to think we are or were. It is our instinct to have performative documents and words that represent the most positive characterizations.

Look, when people pass, I don’t think we need to reveal their darkest moments, their tax returns or all the pain they caused. But people we knew, taught us things, made us feel different ways, pushed and pulled us to become like them and definitely not like them. That is the real essence of their legacies.

Maya Angelou said, “Make a mark on the world that can’t be erased.” I think we make marks on people that cannot be erased. Call them memories, scars, lessons, or legacies, but those marks are the truthful traces of that person we knew.

I have been to many funerals and memorials where some of the unique characteristics, idiosyncrasies, frailties, foibles and extraordinary gifts that someone offered the world were uncomfortably omitted.

Documents bookend our lives. Resume to Obituary. But what happened between the lines, between the years. Linda Ellis’, The Dash Poem, refers to the dash that comes between the year of our birth and the year of our death. That little dash represents everything that happened in our lives. How important it is to consider how we lived that dash fully instead of some accounting for the expectations of others.

Back to my class discussion. I explained that resume virtues and legacy virtues is this dichotomy of shifting from what we want other people to think about us, meeting the expectations of others and what our true values are, how we live them and use them to impact our relationships—to weave our marks into the lives of others. We realize that our legacy is about the vibrations and the ripple effect that we had on the people around us. People we were close to and people we briefly encountered. The energy of the people and places and institutions that we influenced. How we modeled good or not so good things that changed others.

Very few of us will have a building named after us or win the Nobel Prize and we know that even those people over time are forgotten. So, once you give up fame, and the ego trip to be super well known and remembered, the sooner you will embrace the legacy virtues–How and what we want to be every day, not how we will be remembered, because we can’t control that.

I remember I went to a memorial for a very generous donor at a youth serving organization. He left a substantial part of his estate to our organization, and I was there to pay my respects and gratitude. I knew him pretty well. But had never met his family. His wife came up to me, after the service and said, “I’m so glad that you’re receiving this gift, and I know you’ll do good with it. My husband was a good man. But I wish he was as good a father as he was a volunteer for your organization.” That gave me pause about the man I knew and who’s generosity we celebrated. That little conversation taught me about resume assets and legacy liabilities. All generosity has its costs. There is dark side for all reputations. All good has a shadow.

True legacies won’t be reflected in our eulogies and obituaries.

When a person dies, they leave behind a multi-dimensional space. This space is by no means a vaccum, but a rich prism of unique memories and marks that represent what they were about. Their essence lives in this space. A special collection is maintained in this space– what they said, did, how they made us feel–shaped our lives, and impacted the world around them.

We have a personal memory of their laughter, their anger, their quirkiness, their body language, their eating preferences, their phrases and stories. What they said or never said to us. How they were on time or always late. How we knew them and how they remain a mystery. How they were always the same and how they were always changing.

So between the resumes and the obituaries there is so much we don’t know and will never know. The dash is like the Smithsonian, it contains archives of the archives.

Questions and regrets emerge and remain. Why didn’t I ask them about _______? Or talk to them about _________? Before they left us.

Or the amazing discoveries of facts and achievements we learn at the memorial. Isn’t amazing who we know but don’t know? 

While we are busily building our resume facades, let’s think less about looking good versus being good. To consider the marks we may leave without knowing it. If we consider our true virtues over our resume virtues perhaps our obituaries and eulogies will more closely approximate our authentic legacies. The legacy that lives on through the marks that will never be erased.