<p>missypie, your post makes me glad I am not in the business world, and H is a low-level scientist in R & D. The world you describe (buying board seats, looking for business in “volunteering”) is unknown to us.</p>
<p>I live a small life, volunteering in my kids’ schools, our church, and Girl Scouts. It made me feel warm inside when I was very ill several years ago and so many people from these three groups turned out to help, make meals, and express concern about my health. Sometimes I meet people in my community who have heard of me through my volunteer positions, but my reputation does not extend beyond my town. Once my kids are all out of school I will lose some of that and be looking for some other cause to devote my time to. I have a few women friends I meet weekly for lunch and conversation. I don’t make new friends easily.</p>
<p>I’d hate to measure the quality of life by the number of people that comes to one’s funeral. I would rather think that, instead, it is the quality of the people in attendance (did they really know this person well and love them? or, are they just showing up for the free refreshments afterwards?) that matters.</p>
<p>I will say that there are some people with whom I would be devastated if they didn’t come to my funeral (assuming that an afterlife exists and my ghost would find out that said people did not attend).</p>
<p>My husband died 21 months ago. Due to his funeral/memorial I know exactly how big our lives are. One of the things that really hit me was how little family came, just his parents and brothers and sisters, maybe one cousin. I have a huge family, but again, just siblings and parents and one cousin. And yet friends filled the building, well over 200. I live in a small community amongst a bigger urban area. Everyone knows everyone, and it is awesome. The support I’ve gotten over the years from friends is absolutely amazing. But if I hadn’t seen this, if I hadn’t had a reason for everyone to show their support, to tell their stories, I wouldn’t have known the affect we have on the community. I would have said I have a small life. Apparently I don’t.</p>
<p>I lead a small life but my D says I have a fat personality. No…wait…TheMom says “larger than life” is not what that means.</p>
<p>I doubt all that many people will come to my funeral but it hasn’t stopped me from relentlessly acting to try to make the world a better place that I found it, in multiple directions. In which I could wish for more successes but then we’re often unaware of the ripples we cause that touch the lives of others.</p>
<p>missypie, very interesting question. My father was a sweet but not socially adept man but also a brilliant and generous theoretical physicist had a very large funeral and several memorial services. Lots of people came up to me and explained how he had gone out of his way to help them in their early careers and they were now professors at Princeton, Berkeley, Rochester, … . My mother, who was a professor, has been active at a local, regional and national level in religious organizations, started a parochial pre-school, is at 85 still on various non-profit boards (for competence and not money), might have a huge funeral, although I don’t think she has too many close friends. She has touched the lives of many people.</p>
<p>I think I lead a mix of lives. Despite the fact that I travel, I think I have been an unusually involved father (I hope in a good way). I have a very small number of very close friends but lots of second and third tier friends. People I like but with whom I don’t have intense friendships (get invited to weddings, Bar/Bat Mitzvahs of kids, …). My wife is very social and she is always creating social events, often involving people who were initially in my world and become part of hers/ours. On the other hand, professionally, I have written books that a reasonable number of people have read (not bestsellers or anything but professional school students might have read something by me). Who knows what kind of impact these have. I recently met someone from a country I’ve never visited who told me that they’d use ideas from my first book to organized how they handled a key function in that country. (Weird). And, I try to do one pro bono project at a time which is much broader in impact – contributing to the settlement of a civil war, an effort to facilitate an industry agreement to reduce carbon emissions, etc. I don’t know that any of the folks I meet in those contexts will want to come to my funeral, but that isn’t the only criterion of a life well-lived (and missypie was not saying that it was, just a good way to focus on her broader question). </p>
<p>One thing I’m going to work on in the next 25 years is to be more generous in my day-to-day interactions with others. My wife is generous, and people really love her for that. She will have a huge funeral.</p>
<p>I do think that as we parents enter a new phase of life, it is worth asking how we can change the world around us. This can be small and local or bigger. We have friends (probably third or fourth tier) who visited an Asian country and discovered that female law students in the capital had no dormitory and one woman slept under the eaves of the law school building. He raised the money to build a female dormitory and helped build a local network. He then raised money to build a school (think one room schoolhouse), organized construction, and has been quite involved in a small inland town and is doing other things. I think the whole construction cost was under $30,000. He has clearly touched the people of this town. I think there is lots of time left in life to choose professional or volunteer activities that add meaning to one’s life. I highly second the recommendations of Victor Frankl’s book (Man’s Search for Meaning, I think) as well as a lot of the work by Martin Seligman and others on positive psychology.</p>
<p>This thread is perfect when you are contemplating a change after a child leaves for college and all that intense focus on their success evaporates (at least for me…not much I can do at this point!). </p>
<p>Well said, Jollyn. After DS left to College, I started tutoring as an ESL tutor at the local library one evening/week. My student is a Peruvian immigrant who will hopefully learn to speak English well enough to get a leg up in her own career growth (she wants to be a Nurse’s aid).</p>
<p>You can make microloans to people around the world and assist them in improving their lives. This is my most favorite charity as it allows you to ‘teach someone to fish rather than catch fish for them’. Also, when the loan is paid back, you can recirculate the money and donate again to another entrepreneur.</p>
<p>The people I help through this network are in impoverished areas of Africa and Asia. I have loaned to about 20 people through this site. My goal is to loan 2% of my gross annual income. None of these people really “know” me or will attend my funeral. To me, it doesn’t matter how many people “show up” at one’s funeral. What matters more is the number of lives one can transform to be better!</p>
<p>Please check the Kiva.org site. You will see that this is a non-profit organization and YOU get to control how much money you donate to the people who run the organization. I generally pay 100% of my loan to the entrepreneur directly. However, occasionally, I do give money to the organization because I want to help support this awesome group of individuals who live for a greater cause.</p>
<p>shawbridge…I hear what you’re saying about trying to be more generous in day to day interactions.
I think I’m getting less tolerant and a bit more cranky as I age. Just this past week, I got into an email argument with a friend and she proceeded to cancel lunch next week. Another really good friend is ignoring my emails about getting together.
I can’t afford to lose friends…so I think I need to change my behavior. My Dad was a cranky soul (but very dear) and I think I inherited this (or at least learned this from him as a child).</p>
<p>I think there is a difference in joining a board to meet potential clients or customers, and in soliciting the institution’s business. Non profits should not give their business (legal, accounting, insurarnce etc.) to someone because they are on the board. In fact, I think board members should recuse themselves. Look at the mess for all the charities that trusted Bernie M. How about competitive bidding? At my last job, working for someone else, a long time ago, we used competitive bidding for outside legal work. (transactional work).</p>
<p>Not to think that my former law firm was somehow more noble than any one else, but we had a full time pro bono coordinator who worked on death row cases. This was an M&A firm,so no big business for it out of that. Any associate would be supported for pro bono work, and I had a little group for underprivileged children that I worked with in a terrible neighborhood in Brooklyn. If I had stayed around longer, they would have continued to support the activity, and supported other similar projects. Maybe they figure that one will turn out big with big legal work, but this was not how they made their money.</p>
<p>This is more my concern also. I hope our kids will just elope! We’ve attended events (weddings, showers, special birthdays, etc) of people we know pretty well and see semi-regularly, and there always seem to be hordes of other people there that we don’t know. Where do they all come from? Rent-a-guest?</p>
<p>Since I last posted on this thread I lost a good friend (she was 87.) We should all be so lucky to know a person who is so warm, supportive, and loves to have a good chat. She never served on a board in her life, just did her job (worked p.t. until a couple years ago) and everyone liked her.</p>
<p>That’s a large life, IMO.</p>
<p>mousegray–in addition to good friends her age, she had lots of young friends…maybe that’s why she never really got “old.”</p>
<p>mommusic, sorry for the loss of your friend.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The lawyers, bankers, accountants, etc. that I know don’t get involved with a non-profit to get the business of the non-profit. They get invovled to meet the other people who are involved - the hope is that the fellow board members will be CEOs or GCs of Fortune 500 companies who will send business to the lawyer or accountant. If anything, the firms do pro-bono work for the non-profit. </p>
<p>I’ve looked all over the house for Man’s Search for Meaning. I know that it’s been required reading for two of my kids. I may have to go out an buy (another) copy.</p>
<p>My 84 year old father died eight months ago. We didn’t expect a lot of people at his funeral because he was older, and according to my mom, they didn’t have a large circle of friends.</p>
<p>His funeral was packed. They had to bring in chairs; folks were standing in the lobby and the rest waited outside. It was the most amazing thing. He lived a “small” life in that he was just a small town farmer, but he was the type of guy who would stop and give a jump to a stranded car and bring bags of fruits to a friendly store clerk. Many of my cousins drove 4 hours to attend the funeral. I didn’t realize it, but he was like the “favorite” uncle to them.</p>
<p>I only hope that my “small” life will have that huge of an impact…</p>
<p>WOW- I Love this thread! I also did not read all of the entries which I usually do before responding. So forgive me if I’m rehashing old material. I’ll go back and read.</p>
<p>I read the obits every day. No, I’m not morbid. I like to read about peoples lives. I’ve thought about mine, as many of you have said. I wish mine could make front page news locally, never mind nationally. But it won’t. I wonder who will come to my funeral. I honestly hope I have made some kind of impact in this world. Isn’t that our purpose?</p>
<p>Interestingly, I’ve been concerned with who would show up at my father’s funeral because many people he knew have died. When I’ve asked him if he’s concerned, his response is “What difference does it make, I’ll be dead!” He’s 92.</p>
<p>Obviously the dead person does not care. Funerals are for the living. So it is a combination of what you, friends of the dead, would like remembered and what the surviving relatives want remembered.</p>
<p>I am concerned that no-one will give a crap at mine. So what was my purpose in life??</p>
<p>My parents are like that too. Generous to a fault. Truly. Just this week, I celebrated a big birthday and received a card from my college roommate. All these years later, she shared her heartfelt thanks for the way in which my parents “adopted” her on move-in day, taking her with us to shop for the room, including her at dinner when they visited for parents weekend, etc. She had never before told me that she was touched by their generosity but she remembers those feelings more than 25 years later. </p>
<p>And hers is just one example. I can’t count the times that people have told me how my parents have enriched their lives. I’d like to say I’ve acted in the same way but I know that I have work to do.</p>
<p>When I first read this thread, little did I know that I would find myself about to attend a wake and funeral for a person very dear to me ( and countless others ) a week later.
Sadly, I will be doing this tomorrow and Tuesday.
My former SIL, who I remained close too has taken her life.
She most definately lived a large life, and I expect that this will be reflected at the services.</p>