“résumé virtues,” meaning the accomplishments that we list on our CV, our degrees and fellowships and jobs, versus “eulogy virtues,” the things that our friends and family will say about us when we are gone. And it shook me. For my entire life, I had been accumulating mostly résumé virtues. I had plenty of those. But I had also recently attended a funeral for a woman about my age who had died of cancer, and I was struck by how lovingly and movingly her family had spoken about her—with hardly a mention of her impressive professional or educational success. What mattered to them was the person
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