Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal published an essay written by a man named Edmund Carpenter, headlined “Before I Die.” The article was written when Carpenter was 17 years old. He would go on to attend Princeton as an undergraduate, fight in World War II and earning a bronze star for his service, attend Harvard Law school and have a successful career as a lawyer, eventually becoming president of a law firm. He died at age 87 in December 2008 and is survived by his wife, six children and 15 grandchildren.
I know this much is true: I wish I was as insightful at age 17 as Carpenter was. The essay is captivating in its wisdom, maturity and honesty. He explains at the beginning that the essay, while titled “Before I Die,” “is not really concerned with death, but rather with life, my future life.” His purpose in writing is to “set down” the things that he, at the time of writing, believes “essential to happiness and complete enjoyment of life.”
What follows is both intensely personal — the thoughtfulness of his words is evident in how carefully they have been chosen — and also remarkable in its widespread applicability. For the aspirations he describes are things that form the foundation of human existence; they are desires and goals hoped for by many, if not all, persons in their lifetime and so they read both like an earnest journal entry and like a to-do list for mankind.
He begins each paragraph with the same phrase, “Before I die …” and the list itself is heartfelt. “I want to know that I have done something truly great,” is first, “that I have accomplished some glorious achievement the credit for which belongs solely to me.” Careful to avoid seeming like he seeks only fame or power, he qualifies his wish: “I do want, almost above all else, to feel that I have been an addition to this world of ours … I want to know that my life has not been in vain, but that I have, in the course of my existence, done something of which I am rightfully very proud.” He wants to be a citizen of the world, to “have visited a large portion of the globe” and in doing so “improve my outlook on life,” and gain a more complete understanding of life and “satisfaction from living.”
His final two aspirations are at once opposites and inextricably linked. First, he hopes to have “felt a truly great love.” He recognizes that he is rather young to know much about love, but believes that “he who has not loved has not really lived.” His last wish is that he wants to feel a “great sorrow.” And while some may find this wish “the strangest,” he explains that ultimately his wish is to have had a complete life and that “certainly sorrow is a part of life … Once the pangs of sorrow have slackened … its dregs often leave us a better knowledge of this world of ours and a better understanding of humanity.”
Carpenter ends his list there and explains that as he stands on “the threshold of his future, these are the things which to me seem the most valuable.” Above all, he wants his life “to be a truly great adventure, never dull, always exciting and engrossing; not sickly sweet, yet not unhappy. And I believe it will be all I wish if I do these things before I die.”
My spliced version of the original does not nearly do it justice, but I wanted to share this essay for its sincerity and, because this is our last full week of classes (how did that happen?), for its timeliness. I offer up these selections of Carpenter’s essay because they articulate so well what I would like to say — not only to our graduating seniors, but to all of us. In many ways we stand on the threshold of our futures every day on this campus. In our anxiety about the unknown and our dreams of what we hope to accomplish, it is easy for the future to feel burdensome and overwhelming. In those instances, I find Carpenter’s words reassuring.
At only 17, he managed to distill what he believed to be the most essential elements of a fulfilled life — but more than just recognizing them, he lived them. His life is a testament to the power of making one’s dreams a reality. I challenge all of us to do so, and to embrace with conviction the “thrilling experience of exploring the unknown.”
Margaret Delaney is a sophomore at Georgetown U.