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Now, I don’t think about my funeral anymore.  And to be honest, just thinking about imagining my funeral is embarrassing to me now.  Why?  Because something has changed about my life, and I no longer find myself needing the reassurance that my life matters, that people would miss me if I were gone.  I don’t dream about receiving the praise of people, nor do I necessarily feel like I deserve that kind of praise. 

While the anxiety over whether or not my life mattered has left, there’s part of that daydream that has not left.  I still want my life to matter.  I still want to get to the end of my life and be able to look back and know that I have made a unique contribution, that I lived a life of significance.  In high school this was more based on anxiety, a product of selfish egotism, but I think there’s something more to it today.  I believe there is something inside of me that wants to live a life of significance, wants to make a unique contribution to this world that could not have been made by anyone else.  It’s as if there is a voice inside me, whispering to me that I was meant to live for so much more, that a life of significance and meaning is within reach, if I could only grab hold of it and really live it.