CV or Eulogy - What will you be measured by?

Friday night a friend of mine asked me, “What course would you recommend me to pursue?” Using laddering technique, I tried to get to the bottom of the need for pursuing the course which was expressed as “To get some value to CV” with skills being the main driver, fame second and money will follow.

I most certainly could have answered with a laundry list of courses which my friend could have pursued. However, usually I try not to answer such questions with a definite answer and prefer to rather provide frameworks to help the person arrive at the answer himself/herself. As the proverb goes - Give a Man a Fish, and You Feed Him for a Day. Teach a Man To Fish, and You Feed Him for a Lifetime.

A seemingly unrelated event happened the following morning. I had been invited by Artha Forum to attend a session titled “In Pursuit of Balance”

The session was kick started by the Guest of Honor Girija Pande Ji who is a Trustee of SINDA and on the board of the Singapore Government's apex body for social services i.e. the National Council of Social Services. What struck me about the address was the closing remark. Quoting David Brooks of the New York Times, Girija Pande Ji talked about a personal loss. He lost his daughter when she was 37. The Yale and Harvard educated super star at the World Bank was an epitome of what an ideal CV would like at 37. She had probably achieved more in her short career span than many people aspire to in their life time. Yet in her eulogy no one talked about her stellar education or her rapid professional growth. People talked about her compassion, her work with Syrian refugees and her contribution in helping AIDS patients in Africa.

That begets the question: What is it that one would like to be measured by - CV or Eulogy? The greatest award that the world knows of has its genesis in an obituary. The inventor of dynamite ended up leaving his legacy not for weapons of mass destruction but instead for instituting the Nobel Peace Prize. Talented Swedish chemist Nobel held 355 patents to his credit and had amassed a great amount of wealth from his weapons business. Alfred’s brother died in 1888 and many newspapers erroneously thought it was the more (in)famous of the two brothers who has passed away. One among them was a French newspaper which published an obituary titled "Le marchand de la mort est mort" ("The merchant of death is dead"). This shook Alfred Nobel to the core. He certainly didn’t want to be remembered as the merchant of death. As often happens in science and life, the most interesting things are a result of either serendipity or error. This error on part of the French newspaper gave us the most important prize in the history of mankind viz the Nobel Peace Prize. After reading his obituary, Alfred Nobel decided to posthumously donate the majority of his wealth to institute the Nobel Prize!

So what would you like to be measured by – CV or Eulogy? If you were to drop dead at this very moment what would people remember you for? Please mention in comments.