Pulling a Tom Sawyer

In The Pledge, I outlined something I once used to identify which of my many life ambitions corresponded with my unconscious values. I called it the Tom Sawyer Strategy. As in: If you could eavesdrop on your own funeral (as Tom and Huck Finn did in the Twain classic), what are the sorts of things you’d like to hear people say about you?

From my family, I would have liked to hear things about being a good provider and protector. From my business colleagues, it would have been about being smart and energetic. And from my friends, it would have been about being generous and loyal.

The reason to put yourself through this exercise is that you can identify the qualities you admire and want to emulate in each sphere of your life. You can then use what you discover to guide your decisions as time passes.

I still think it’s a good and useful practice. But I’ve come to realize that even if you do your best to behave in accordance with your core principles, you have no control over what those you leave behind think of you.

This little bit of anagnorisis has made its way into my mind several times over the decades. Just this past week, it came to me in an unexpected and frivolous way. AS, one of my golf buddies (most of them high school mates), told a very funny story about a friend of his vomiting. This prompted many other throw-up stories, each one funnier than the last.

It was all good fun. And I was very much enjoying myself when I recognized that more than half of those stories were about me. Me. Vomiting. I had forgotten what a sensitive stomach I had as a teenager. Apparently, my friends had not. And I realized that my lofty hopes of being remembered for my kindnesses or accomplishments would be forgotten. The stories told at my funeral would be soaked in vomit.