“Résumé Virtues and Eulogy Virtues”

Did you read this article by David Brooks from The New York Times a couple weeks ago? I’d highly recommend it! Here’s an excerpt that I particularly like:

“About once a month I run across a person who radiates an inner light. These people can be in any walk of life. They seem deeply good. They listen well. They make you feel funny and valued. You often catch them looking after other people and as they do so their laugh is musical and their manner is infused with gratitude. They are not thinking about what wonderful work they are doing. They are not thinking about themselves at all.

…

It occurred to me that there were two sets of virtues, the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral — whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful. Were you capable of deep love?

We all know that the eulogy virtues are more important than the résumé ones. But our culture and our educational systems spend more time teaching the skills and strategies you need for career success than the qualities you need to radiate that sort of inner light. Many of us are clearer on how to build an external career than on how to build inner character.

But if you live for external achievement, years pass and the deepest parts of you go unexplored and unstructured. You lack a moral vocabulary. It is easy to slip into a self-satisfied moral mediocrity. You grade yourself on a forgiving curve. You figure as long as you are not obviously hurting anybody and people seem to like you, you must be O.K. But you live with an unconscious boredom, separated from the deepest meaning of life and the highest moral joys. Gradually, a humiliating gap opens between your actual self and your desired self, between you and those incandescent souls you sometimes meet.”

Brooks reflects on how he has achieved much professional success in his life–the résumé virtues–but is saddened by the thought that he is not a person with “generosity of spirit or that depth of character.” And after realizing he wanted to be a bit more like those people, he set out to find what it is that makes these people the way they are. “If we wanted to be gimmicky, we could say these accomplishments amounted to a moral bucket list, the experiences one should have on the way toward the richest possible inner life.”

As I read the article, I found myself thinking about people in my life who radiate goodness and have depth of character, and reflecting on where I’m at in my life…am I focusing on the résumé virtues too much? Am I moving forward with experiences to fulfill the richest possible inner life?

The article is most definitely worth a read and will make you stop and think (even if only for a minute)! Would love to hear your thoughts on it. xx

(Excerpt and image via NY Times.)