Fill Your Crate

What Legacy.com's CMO learned from asking one person each day about the meaning of life.

Since Jan. 1, 2015, I’ve been interviewing one person each day about the meaning of life. Mostly total strangers. The Meaning of Life Project is my way of sharing what I've learned.

Working at Legacy.com, a company dedicated to memorials and obituaries, I’m touched by death in some small way each day. It’s not what I expected. Rather than making me feel sad, the work has made me more grateful for each passing day. I hug my kids a little tighter, am a little better at making time for friends, and understand the need to value wisdom in a different way.

In that spirit, I set out to better understand the meaning of life — and to build our collective wisdom — by conducting one "Meaning of Life" interview each day. I focused the interviews around life's big questions: What advice would you give to a baby? What would you do differently if you could go back? And most importantly, what is the meaning of life?

This month, the answers seemed to center on an awareness of how fleeting our time is. There was palpable sense of urgency in the responses I got, a drive to fully experience the journey. A colleague at work shared this excerpt from Umberto Colangelo’s obituary, and I think it perfectly captures the essence of my interviews:

…in his own words, here is what Bert wants you to know: “You have often heard people say that they are‘waiting for their ship to come in.’ I believe that everyone’s ship comes in at exactly the same time… and that is the moment we are born. Our ship arrives with a cargo area that holds a large, empty crate and from our very first cry, everything goes into that crate — everything. The first and last words we will speak; every breath we will ever take; every heart we will ever break. Every thought, every word, every deed… all our sunshine, rain, suffering, and pain. Every opportunity, experience, success, and failure. Every relationship we will ever share. We spend our entire life filling that crate until one day our ship arrives for us again. Hopefully, our final journey will be over calm seas helped along by a slight breeze… and then we set sail, never to be seen or heard from again. But there is one thing we leave behind. The crate. The crate filled with everything we ever did, said, or felt in our lives. This is the priceless treasure that we leave on the shore for others to find and by which to remember us or judge us. As you read this, my ship has set sail for my final journey… so I bid you this: As you live your life and make your choices, remember to fill your crate well, my friends. Fill it well.

Below are some excerpts from the past month’s interviews. I hope that they’ll inspire you to live fully and to “fill your crate" exceptionally well.

“Pay attention, just pay attention, it’s a blink; you know that it’s a blink. I remember when you were pregnant and now he’s a teenager. It’s a blink and suddenly its one day and then the next and something has changed that you can’t go back to. So pay attention, that’s all. Every once in a while just stop and just look. Don’t clean anything. Don’t rearrange anything. Just pay attention. That’s all, it’s pretty simple.

“As I got older and moved away from home I didn’t get to my parents’ or grandparents’ enough. I got all tied up in my own life so I didn’t go as often as I should. See them as often as you can. You don’t want to regret it later.

“Never lose your curiosity. Never stop learning. Travel as often as you can.

“For me, the meaning of life in a selfish way is my kids and my wife.

Kim Evenson is Legacy.com's Chief Marketing Officer. The inspiration for the Meaning of Life Project was born from the company's mission of preserving life stories and sharing important lessons.