Mental health crisis: Résumé or eulogy

We are facing a mental health crisis in the West characterised by rising levels of anxiety, depression and unhappiness, a situation which seems surprising given that we live in a culture obsessed with self-care, self-help and self-actualization. It appears that when we make everything about us, we end up feeling nothing. 

Martin Luther suggested that the primary problem was our inclination to turn inward on ourselves (incurvatus in se), a problem we have ironically reappropriated as therapy. A tragic turn of events, because rather than provide a cure, it has unleashed a mental illness pandemic, a pandemic that didn’t spontaneously arise in some foreign marketplace of ideas but was the result of a mind virus modified by gain-of-hubris research and leaked from our local mental health centre. 

Therapy, while appropriately attempting to build self-esteem, overshot its target and led us to believe we were royalty, which is a hard sell in a world replete with people with similar delusions of grandeur. Maybe instead of building up our personal portfolios we need to begin by cultivating servant hearts. Maybe instead of living large we need to give ourselves permission to be one of the little people.

“How much larger would your life be if yourself could become smaller in it.” (GK Chesterton)

Christian physician and missionary Albert Schweitzer said:

“I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found to serve.” 

Is it possible that we could be happier if we thought less of ourselves and more of others? Can true happiness be found in serving rather than being served?

Elizabeth Oldfield, in her fascinating new book, ‘Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times’, sheds some light on this idea by borrowing David Brook’s analogy of a life defined by a eulogy or a résumé:

“New York Times columnist David Brooks writes about the difference between résumé and 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? He argues that, even though we all know that the eulogy virtues are most important, it is the résumé virtues—the skills we need to earn more money—that we spend vastly more time and attention on.” (Elizabeth Oldfield) 

Would our mental health improve if we spent more time preparing our eulogies and less time padding our résumés?

Read more:

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Supporting people with mental health challenges

Fatherhood, mental health and masculinity

Can the Bible teach us anything about depression?

Retirement party

I don’t want to denigrate résumés because they are an essential component of the employment process, providing employers with critical information about the ability of an applicant to perform the duties necessary for a particular job. However, while résumés may give insight into our technical prowess, they leave the far more important question of whether we can play nice with others largely unanswered. 

It is for this reason that a résumé by itself is inadequate and must be accompanied by an interview and letters of recommendation. It is imperative that both the employee’s technical skill and people skills are properly married if one is to achieve a corporate happily-ever-after. 

So, perhaps, when hiring a new employee, we ought to concern ourselves less with the skills they bring to the table and concentrate more on what will be said about them at their retirement party. 

Résumé meets the road 

I have known many talented, compassionate, thoughtful people who wanted to be physicians but who lacked the requisite grade point average or test scores to get into medical school. I have also known many brilliant people with stellar grades and scores who got into medical school but who lacked the requisite people skills necessary to be good physicians. 

I certainly understand that with large numbers of applicants a screening process is necessary but sadly that process ends up ignoring the very traits that make one an outstanding health care provider. I believe that in medicine, as with every other job, the knowledge you possess is far less important than the way you apply it in the workplace. 

I volunteered for a year at an elder care facility before I got into medical school, and while I did it to beef up my résumé, I learned something very important. I discovered that the résumé I was so determined to embellish didn’t get the final word on my medical career. During my last week at the retirement centre, the residents gave me a farewell party during which they presented me with a plaque listing the qualities they felt were the most important for a physician to possess. 

So, what was on that list? 

A good physician is one who…

“Knows how to listen and is willing to teach me.”

“Cares for my spirit and emotions as well as my body.”

“Looks me in the eye and I know he is interested in me.”

“Is brave enough to say, ‘I don’t know’ sometimes.”

“Most of all, he is one who recognizes that if he were all these things, he would be a superman, and I appreciate him as human.”

Interestingly, they didn’t mention test scores, grades, class ranking or training institution, which is surprising given that those are the very criteria used by the medical establishment to determine one’s “worthiness” to be a physician. It appears that people confronting illness and approaching death are much more interested in their physicians compassio vitae than their curriculum vitae.

Portfolios or poetry

“Does it take a death to learn what a life is worth?” (Jackson Brown - Of Missing Persons)

Why do I buy the old CDs of rock stars who have recently died? Why am I inspired to read the works of authors who have recently passed away? Their CDs and books have been around for years, yet instead of reading or listening to them while they were alive, I waited until they were dead. Why do I feel the need to hop on their creative on-ramp when they have just reached the end of the road? 

Why does it take a death to recognise the significance of a life?

Isn’t it interesting that the only time we’re able to sit still for our life portraits is when we’ve died? Instead of carefully painting them ourselves, we end up handing the brush and palette to a pastor, family member, or friend and hope they will create a masterpiece. The good news is that while our individual résumés will differ significantly during this life, death puts us all on an equal footing such that every eulogy has the potential to be a magnum opus.

The problem with the enormous amounts of life data we generate is that it’s meaningless when we die. When we attend a funeral, we don’t want to hear the résumé of the deceased but rather want to be told how they transcended it. A eulogy would be quite sad if all we heard was, “Here lies Bill, born 6/10/1954, birth weight 7lb 6oz, Apgar score 6 and 9, AGA (appropriate for gestational age). Educated up through a master’s degree in economics. Worked 50 years, spawned three children who spawned three grandchildren, and died of cardiac failure on 12/5/2008 leaving a sizable inheritance, amen.” 

We get very uncomfortable attending the funeral of someone whose stock portfolio is the only evidence they had walked the face of the Earth. We want to know about Bill’s passions and hobbies and how he had touched the lives of others. We hope to hear a story full of poetic nuance, plot twists and conflict resolution. 

“The focus of the eulogies was relentlessly relational. What was left of a person was their imprint on others, as a friend, child, neighbour, colleague, parent, partner, community volunteer. How much they cared, how they showed up. How well they loved.” (Elizabeth Oldfield)

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Fruit of the Spirit checklist

We have already determined that a résumé is inadequate to characterise a life well lived, but does a eulogy do any better? We need to begin by asking what constitutes a proper eulogy? What are the criteria used for determining what to include in a speech honouring the dead? 

When we put together a eulogy for a loved one, we aren’t interested in listing their skills and accomplishments, but focus on the way they touched the lives of others. A eulogy asks not how much the deceased acquired but how much they gave away. Interestingly, eulogies take on a distinctly religious flavour, because they aren’t interested in cataloguing works of the flesh but in checking off boxes on a fruit of the Spirit checklist. 

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22-23)

The reason we go through this inventory is because fruits of the Spirit provide nourishment for others while self-adulation just eats away at us from the inside. 

Eulogy for the living

Most of us have attended the funeral of a family member, friend, or neighbour. Often there is an open mic moment where people are encouraged to share stories about how the deceased had touched their lives. The problem with this practice is that the one who most needs to hear those words is dead. Sadly, we store away our cherished memories of the deceased in a lock box only opened when the coffin is nailed shut.

We generally think of a eulogy as a speech honouring the deceased at a funeral. The word, “eulogy”, however, comes from the Greek word, eulogia, which means “good word” and is not restricted to the deceased. Maybe we need to be more intentional and offer “good words” to the living, so they don’t fall on the deaf ears of the dead. 

I think we avoid eulogies because they feel like the closing credits to a movie we don’t want to end. However, what we fail to appreciate is that a eulogy, like closing credits, is the opportunity to thank and acknowledge the important people who made the deceased’s life a blockbuster. An appropriate farewell for a loved one isn’t a highlight reel from a documentary but the closing credits of a biopic listing all the people who contributed to a life lived well.

Is our fear of dying so strong that we distract ourselves by writing résumés about the mountains of our accomplishments instead of contemplating how we will be eulogised after we pass through the valley of the shadow of death? The problem is that we get so invested in building up our résumé we forget that it will be our eulogy that gets the last word. 

Life résumé or eulogy?

So, what does all this talk of résumés and eulogies have to do with our mental health crisis? I would suggest that meaning ultimately comes down to the type of life document we devote our lives to writing. 

A résumé is always at risk of becoming a rap sheet because it traffics in works of the flesh, but a eulogy will acknowledge time-served performing community service in a food pantry distributing fruits of the Spirit. Résumés store up earthly treasures which are always at risk of losing value because of fluctuating cultural market forces, but eulogies deposit riches in a heavenly treasury, which continuously accrues God’s interest. 

A résumé may get you a job, but it won’t make your work meaningful. Meaning isn’t found in a job title but in a job well done, and a job well done is evaluated by the eulogy spoken over us by others. Résumés may be tickets into an earthly job market, but eulogies are the all-important letters of recommendation for citizenship in the kingdom to come.

Sadly, the postmodern pursuit of meaning has been reduced to curating a résumé filled with data about how we lived for ourselves, promoted our truth, and lived by our morals, instead of the far more meaningful task of preparing a eulogy describing how we cared for widows, orphans and strangers. Life, like work, is only meaningful when it is done for something or someone outside of us, and the greater the one you live or work for, the greater the meaning. We, therefore, have a choice if we want our lives to be meaningful; work for the man or work for the Lord.

“And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him…Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.” (Colossians 3:17, 23-24)

Thankfully, St Peter isn’t waiting at heaven’s gate to be handed a résumé of personal accomplishments but is instead listening carefully for the eulogies offered by the naked we clothed, the hungry we fed and the strangers we visited. 

Erik Strandness is a physician and Christian apologist who practiced neonatal medicine for more than 20 years and has written three apologetic books, ’The Director’s Cut: Finding God’s Screenplay on the Cutting Room Floor’, ’Cry of the Elephant Man: Listening for Man’s Voice Above the Herd’ and ’God Spoke: Bridging the Sacred Secular Divide with Divine Discourse’. Information about his books can be found at godsscreenplay.com.