The Speech I Want to Hear at my 100th Birthday Party
A coworker died a while back, and over the next few days chit-chat at the water cooler revolved around the last conversation we’d had with her, the last thoughts she expressed about life and death, how and why we would miss her. And I wondered. What will others say about me when I’m dearly departed? A friend immediately piped up. “She was a very kind person.”
Looking back at that particular time in my life, my friend was verbalizing a healthy dose of wishful thinking, expressing hopes for some future as yet unseen. Meaning, Ex Number One had left me about a year before, and I was still so enraged that I couldn’t see straight. “Kind” was not the word I would have picked. Yet here it was, coming from a friend who thought more highly of me than I did of myself.
Through the years my friend’s voice has replayed inside my head. “She was a very kind person.” And I’ve wondered. If I wasn’t very kind at the time she said it, could she see potential for it somewhere in the depths of my soul? Was she telling me it was possible to learn and develop kindness as I traveled through life’s journey? Was she applying Stephen R. Covey’s advice to begin with the end in mind?
