After a cursory Google search, I discovered that the average obituary is around 200 words. There are outliers for sure and some people live such remarkable and public lives that they have entire books written about them.
But the average is only 200 words for us regular folk.
It makes me wonder if it is even remotely possible to summarize a life of any length or substance in those few words. It feels like a challenge that I need to take on for my own life. In so far as I believe free will exists, I believe we get to tell our own story, even in passing.
It is a massive effort to communicate what a person’s life consists of to the broadest possible audience. When you throw in the 200 word constraint, it makes every word you choose crucial.
200 individual decisions that meticulously plot out the course of one human life.
Challenge accepted.
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