Ethical wills are a way to share your beliefs, values, achievements, blessings, advice, and life lessons with your family and friends. When I first read about composing an ethical will it struck me as a bit presumptuous – why would anyone ever want to read it? Put more bluntly, who would ever care?
I got past that objection by realizing that I, for one, would have wanted to read such a document from a deceased family member. So here is mine.
Life Lessons and Legacies – David Kelsey, age 76, January, 2024
Life and its meaning. Because I was always interested in philosophy, I spent hours in my younger years obsessing over “the meaning of life”. Then I read a book that made a profound impression on me: Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. He was a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp where he witnessed fellow inmates, including several family members, die in the most horrible circumstances.
He wrote that the Nazis could take everything from him except for one priceless thing, and that was his ability to choose what attitude he would take about what was happening to him and to those around him.
If, under those terrible conditions he could hang on to that, then I reasoned I could too. I think of his attitude as something profoundly human that can be threatened, but never destroyed. I’ve tried always to remember that when bad things happen.
Death and its meaning. Some people fear death because they think of it as nonexistence. Regardless of whether you believe in an afterlife, I suggest there is a better way to think about this.
Take a few minutes and think of all the things you leave behind for others: experiences, memories, stories, letters, and pictures, to name only a few. This is a form of immortality for you and can be, in turn, eventually for those you leave behind.
Your survivors, in their grieving process, will internalize more and more of what you have left behind with them while simultaneously learning to necessarily distance themselves from their grief. This allows them to move on with their own lives.
We are gone, but our past existence, in some form or other, lives on. I find this idea comforting for them, and for me. Morrie Schwartz, in the final months of his life, is quoted in Mitch Albom’s book Tuesdays with Morrie: “Death ends a life, not a relationship“.
Documents like ethical wills can be of real value in this process.
Religion and its meaning. I’ve never belonged to an organized religion and I’m unlikely ever to join one. That does not mean I reject the idea that we’re part of something “larger”. Nor does it mean I believe that children should not be exposed to religious concepts.
I support any religion that encourages independent thinking in the search for truth along with promoting values such as honesty, integrity, fairness, accountability, trustworthiness, and equal treatment for all.
I have serious issues with people who are convinced their beliefs are the only possible “right” beliefs, especially fundamentalists on one end and atheists on the other. Fundamentalists ought to examine their beliefs in light of whether they promote good will to all. And atheists ought to read about current theories popular in quantum physics and then ask themselves whether these theories are any more or less believable than the idea of the possibility there exists something “greater” than ourselves.
Family. The importance of family and the need for love and support within families cannot be overstated. While this may sound trite to some, it’s not, especially for those who don’t have it. Look around for examples and you’ll find truth everywhere in this statement. My understanding of this has deepened with age.
To children – your parents should not be used as an excuse for your own shortcomings. Take the best from them and discard the rest.
To parents – To “honor your parents” is an admirable goal. Unfortunately, we do not always live up to that goal.We should do better while we still have the opportunity.
Until I moved away, married, had children, divorced, remarried, and had grandchildren did I ever consider the effects moving away had on my parents. If I had, I would have devoted more time and effort to keep in touch with them. Of the few regrets in my life, this one is at the top of my list; it’s a regret that cannot be remedied.
Passion and beauty. Find something, or someone, in your life to feel passionate about. And always be on the lookout for artistic beauty. Passion will provide you with an inner energy to empower you in the difficult times we all endure in our lives. One of my passions is classical music, both performing it and listening to it.
Beauty will remind you that such a thing exists – you have only to look for and recognize it – especially in times when ugliness seems to be all around us.
Work. How do you view what you do on a regular basis: a job, a career, or perhaps a calling? How does your answer to this question affect your life, both short term and long term? These do not have to be mutually exclusive as you may be able to turn one into the other (for example, a job into a career). Sometimes it helps to take a step back and ask yourself where you are, where you’re headed, and where you want to end up.
Careers. I’ve had three: corporate America, music, and investment management. The first had its financial benefits, but they came at a cost I had neither anticipated in the beginning nor fully realized until later. The second was a major focus in Phase 2 of my life. The third is active, challenging, and rewarding.
Goals. Lifetime goals can be summarized into four categories: work and achievement, relationships and intimacy, spirituality (including religion), and what Robert Emmons called generativity – leaving a legacy and thereby contributing something to society. We owe it to ourselves and to the important people in our lives to consider how we rank these in terms of importance in our own lives, not once, but continously throughout our lives. Being aware of how these rankings change over our lifetimes is the first step in adjusting them as desired.
Goals can have a dark side – be aware that setting goals for yourself can be both very useful and potentially very destructive. Some goals are OK when set as “pass/fail” – setting aside 5% of your salary and putting it into savings or towards retirement. These goals are measurable. If you occasionally fall short of meeting them you can simply ask yourself why that happened, and either try to meet them next time or change the goals as being too high and unrealistic or too low and not ambitious enough.
Other goals such as strengthening the relationships in your life should never be “pass/fail”. These goals should be set in ways that will allow you to step back and think about what you have learned, and are learning, along the way.
Accomplishments. I’ve always valued my own accomplishments and those of family members. But it’s easy to focus on personal accomplishments throughout your life and forget that to do so you may be assigning lower priorities elsewhere that may be, or should be, of equal or even greater importance.
For most of us, accomplishments accompany us to the grave while what we pass on to others lives on.
Competence. Striving to achieve a level of competence is fine as long as you don’t go past the point where you no longer get any fullfilment from striving for it. The idea that you have to be competent at everything you do will, at some point, bring you a lot of unhappines. And regardless of the media nonsense you likely have been bombarded with, you can’t give 110% to anything.
Success. Success is transitory – one success leads to imagining what the next one might be. And if you tend to view everything you do in terms of success and failure, you’re creating an exhausting competition with two competitors combined into one individual – you. One of you is always going to lose.
Failure. Don’t be afraid to fail or make mistakes; embrace failure and learn from it. You will learn a whole lot more from your failures than you will from your successes. For a long time, I wanted to be a concert pianist. I was good, but not good enough to make a sustainable career with it. Coming to terms with that was a great stress reliever.
This applies to children as well. Children learn from failures and they learn from dealing with adversity. Encourage them, love them, and keep them safe, but let them learn, cope, and grow. And please be skeptical of whatever the current crowd of “experts” is spouting when it comes to raising children.
Quitting. Annie Duke’s book Quit, The Power of Knowing When To Walk Away, (2022) is instructive.
“When we quit, we fear two things: that we’ve failed and that we’ve wasted our time, effort, or money.” These two fears have the potential to limit your future at best, and destroy it at worst.
How many times have you ever observed a person, a business, an institution, or a government “double down” when pursuing an obviously losing course of action?
If you find yourself in a position where you are considering “quitting”, you might want to read her book. If the stakes are high in your particular situation, you might want to consider hiring a “quitting coach”. Remind yourself that if you are not ready to make a decision, you’ve already made one – to embrace the status quo.
Predictions. Many of us presume we have a a fairly good idea of what our lives will be like 10 years in the future. Some spend many hours planning and building their “dream house” thinking they will live out their lives in it. Not likely. Studies have shown repeatedly and conclusively that we are not good about making such predictions. If you’re skeptical, ask yourself if ten or twenty years ago you could have accurately predicted where you are right now.
So, does this mean planning in general is of limited value?
Absolutely not. What it means is that you will change over the years, and when important decisions are being made in the present, one should always consider what it would take to undo them later.
Decision follies. In the extreme, there are two types of people when it comes to making decisions: maximizers, and satisficers. Maximizers spend much time and many hours of effort carefully defining and evaluating all the possibilities before making a decision. Satisficers begin by evaluating the choices but stop looking as soon they come upon one that is “good enough”. Curiously, based on psychological studies, maximizers are later less satisifed with the decisions they made.
Neither of these is inherently bad. Not knowing which you tend to be could be a problem. Have you ever known someone who will spend hours shopping online for a particular item trying to save one dollar who think nothing of choosing the first car they like the look of on the new car dealers lot?
Humor. “Cheer up – things could be worse. So I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse.” This kind of wry humor has always appealed to me. I value this brand of humor as a way to help one navigate through trying times.
Giving advice. No matter how well intentioned, be reluctant to give unsolicited advice. Even if people ask for advice, they usually don’t really want it – they only want you to agree with what they’re already thinking or have already decided. If you think someone really wants your advice, ask them first if you have their permission to give it to them.
You can also try serving as a model in thoughts and actions and let other people come to their own conclusions.
Gratitude. If you wake up in the morning and don’t feel grateful to be alive, and grateful for the people in your life, think about finding ways to make it so, regardless of your age. I cannot overstate my belief in this.
The frequently annoying need to be “right”. This seems to be a disease of youth, scientists determined to protect, at any cost, their work from challenges, non-scientists who mistakenly believe they understand science, and people who are incapable of holding two conflicting ideas in their heads at the same time.
As I get older I’m dismayed that other people seem to get more and more narrow-minded and adamant they are “right” in their beliefs. This is sad especially given the amount of both misinformation and disinformation we are bombarded with on a daily basis in the “information age”.
I seem to be certain about less and less the older I get about things that don’t count for very much. Always allow for the possibility that you may be mistaken. You may find that as a result you subsequently become less judgmental when considering your own shortcomings and the shortcomings of others.
Letting go. Once you have determined there is nothing you can do about something over which you have no control or influence, stop fussing over it.
If, after giving a complex problem a lot of thought and making a decision that subsequently did not turn out well, neither you nor your decision is at fault. Have faith in your decision processes and accept the result. Worrying about things over which you have no control and blaming yourself for poor outcomes reached in good faith is emotionally destructive.
Achieving balance. In my younger years success and accomplishments were high on my list of priorities. Now that I’m older, the importance of family, serving others, realizing and accepting that relationships matter, and living in the present have become more important. So, on occasion, take a minute or two and ask yourself “What really matters?” And respond accordingly.
Retaining a sense of purpose. Try this: do something for yourself every day, do something for someone else every day without being asked, and try hard not to leave others worse off than the way you found them.
Never relinquish your right to be skeptical. Especially when written sources are presented as “well established fact” or people are presented as “experts”. Learning how to ask the right questions is a formidable skill that will serve you well throughout your life. I have always assigned more credibility to physicians who have told me that either they or the medical industry as a whole simply do not know all the answers than doctors who spout industry guidelines with no further explanation or justification.
Aging. At age 76, I’m seeing these challenges:
Being too quick to make commitments you may be sorry for later. “Freedom” tends to be overlooked until you lose it. Think twice, act once.
Undervaluing “simplicity” and overvaluing “complexity”, and being too “busy”.
Finding ways to share your skills.
Balancing living in the present and planning for your future. This is way more challenging than it sounds.
Giving back. Whether giving to a charity or doing something with more personal involvement such as mentoring, find ways to give back. We sometimes spend our working lives striving for recognition and financial rewards; it’s gratifying how much can be accomplished by doing things without regard to who gets the credit.
Legacies. In the literature on aging and ethical wills it’s popular to ask what sort of legacy you would like to leave. I think it’s a poor question as the answer will ultimately be determined by the people you leave behind, not by what you would like the answer to be.
A better question is the one addressed in Frank Capra’s movie It’s a Wonderful Life: Would the world have been a better or worse place had I never been born?
When it’s finally over. Perhaps the best way to end this post is to ask, “What will I miss when I’m gone?”
Answering that question might lend insight to what you can do right now.
Updates. Last update: January 6, 2024. This post will be updated periodically until there is no more need – or ability – to do so, whichever comes first.