Log #2

WHAT DO I WANT ON MY OBITUARY

The title may be some kind of eccentric and exaggerated. But this is what I question myself after watching Lux Narayan’s TED talk <What I learned from 2,000 obituaries>.

“Obituary is a notice of the death of a person, often with a biographical sketch, as in a newspaper.” I could remember the last obituary that I have earnestly read was the one of Yang Jiang —— the writer of memoir < We Three> and the wife of Qian Zhongshu.

Lux have collected and analyzed 2000 editorial，non-paid obituaries of 2015 and 2016. And he found that the word “help” was appeared in second highest frequency. And the name “John” was ranking first. This is really fascinating because whether you are famous or not, help made you remembered by others. So we undergraduates could think about how to use our talents to help society .

And there is another interesting conclusion —— the average age people achieved things is 37 .  It’s nearly fifteen years after our graduations. So we have enough time to learn about our jobs and go deep into our occupations. Just do not be too dysphoric.

Resource：http://www.ted.com/talks/lux_narayan_what_i_learned_from_2_000_obituaries?language=en