The Study of the Good

The word eulogy is composed of the Greek roots eu- meaning good and -logos meaning word, speech, or study of. So, in a sense, you could say that eulogy is the study of the good. In Stephen R Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, one of the exercises he recommends is to seriously imagine your funeral - who you would want to be there and what you would want them to say. In this way you can try to zero in on what should really be important in life and on what you should be dedicating your time, talents and resources. Our whole lives can and ought to be one big eulogy, or study of the good. We come to this life exposed to good and evil, beauty and ugliness, kindness and cruelty, generosity and selfishness, love and hate. We don't always know which is which, and even when we know we often choose convenience over courtesy, comfort over compassion, cowardice over courage, childishness over charity. We often sacrifice our future welfare for the immediate demands of the present. But if we start with the end in mind, if we sincerely consider what we would like others to say of us in their eulogies, then we can start today and every day studying and choosing the good. We owe it to ourselves and everyone who loves us to refuse to allow our fears and conveniences and traumas and resentments and the choices and actions of others to dictate the contents of our eulogies. We owe it to ourselves and everyone who loves us to write our own eulogies by studying and choosing and embodying the good every day of our life.