This morning I decided to buy a copy of The Times to read at the train station whilst waiting for the next train, as I just missed my usual 7:28 by less than a minute. As I got into the First Class coach and sitting amongst the businessmen in their pin-striped suits reading the FT or busy tapping away on their Blackberries or laptops, I pulled out my copy of The Times and continued reading it, feeling very much like a businessmen, like the rest of the passengers.
As I read the paper, I happened to turn to page 60 and it contained the Obituaries Section and today there were two long articles about Professor Leslie Alcock (an archaeologist famed for excavating King Authur's 'Camelot') and Barbara Epstein (founder and joint-editor of The New York Review of Books), where the former received a full and the latter a half-page write-up about their lives and times while they were alive.
As I read about the life stories of these two people, my eyes happened to catch a small paragraph at the foot of the page about the death of someone of no consequence. It was written by the son of the dead man, who said, "...my father was a keen reader of Times obituaries, remarking to me once that they offered inspiration from good people who had done good things, in contrast with the general preoccupation of the media with bad people doing bad things."
How poignant and true that statement is? This leads to think about my own life: if I were to die one day, how would my obituary read? It seems there's a lot of good I need to do if I want to fill the same amount of space in the papers as Prof. Alcock or Madame Epstein. Already, half of my life has been spent and the amount of good I have done so far hardly amounted to anything worth mentioning. My life, indeed, is obituarily challenged.
As I read the paper, I happened to turn to page 60 and it contained the Obituaries Section and today there were two long articles about Professor Leslie Alcock (an archaeologist famed for excavating King Authur's 'Camelot') and Barbara Epstein (founder and joint-editor of The New York Review of Books), where the former received a full and the latter a half-page write-up about their lives and times while they were alive.
As I read about the life stories of these two people, my eyes happened to catch a small paragraph at the foot of the page about the death of someone of no consequence. It was written by the son of the dead man, who said, "...my father was a keen reader of Times obituaries, remarking to me once that they offered inspiration from good people who had done good things, in contrast with the general preoccupation of the media with bad people doing bad things."
How poignant and true that statement is? This leads to think about my own life: if I were to die one day, how would my obituary read? It seems there's a lot of good I need to do if I want to fill the same amount of space in the papers as Prof. Alcock or Madame Epstein. Already, half of my life has been spent and the amount of good I have done so far hardly amounted to anything worth mentioning. My life, indeed, is obituarily challenged.
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