Thinking about our epitaph can help us not to live life by accident.  But there’s also a danger in endeavoring to write it ourselves—i.e., the presumption that we decide how we will be remembered.

Thomas Jefferson is a case in point.  He left detailed instructions for his headstone, from the obelisk design to the words themselves, which he stated thus:

“… on the faces of the Obelisk the following inscription, & not a word more:

Here was buried
Thomas Jefferson
Author of the Declaration of American Independence
of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom
& Father of the University of Virginia

because by these, as testimonials that I have lived, I wish most to be remembered.”

It is interesting, isn’t it, that he didn’t particularly care about being remembered for having been president…even though, apart from authoring the Declaration, most people remember him more as president than either the founder of UVA or the author of the Virginia statute.

Jefferson’s example reminds us that no matter what actually gets written on our headstone, even if we write it ourselves, what we’re remembered for isn’t entirely up to us.

But Jefferson’s instruction “and not a word more” is now even a little ironic, given that most of the ink spilled today about the American founder concerns his problematic relationship with Sally Hemings and with the institution of slavery, rather than his contributions to the establishment of our nation.

As Shakespeare’s Mark Antony observed: “The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones….”

Most of us would be proud beyond measure to have accomplished what Jefferson did in his lifetime…we’d also be ashamed of the sins he committed.  

But I wonder if Jefferson’s greatest legacy is actually a cautionary tale about, well, the very notion of a legacy.  Perhaps the lesson of his epitaph is less about what gets written than about whose story of our life actually counts in the end.  

We’ll give that some thought tomorrow.  For now…

Have a wonderful day.