I had been thinking about this idea over the past few months, even incorporating it into a talk or two – the realization that while we spend an awful lot of time building our resumes, it isn’t what is on our resumes that is what people are going to remember us most for.

And then Arianna Huffington brought it up at Wisdom 2.0, pointing out that our eulogies rarely contain statements like “George was absolutely amazing. He increased market share by 1/3,” or “Mary made SVP at 35 and she never ate lunch away from her desk. Her PowerPoints were incredible.”

Our eulogies are about how we made people feel.

Yes, of course there can be a connection between hard work, access to opportunity, access to meaningful life experiences, and the experience of joy.

But there are many people in the world who experience all of those things without ever increasing marketshare. Or building a beautiful PowerPoint.