His own epitaph

Zhang Dai was born into wealth. He was a connoisseur, a collector, a writer; he had kept servants, ridden good horses, dressed well, collected paintings, gone to the theatre, eaten the best food available in China at the time.

The Ming dynasty fell. He became an old man living in poverty in the hills, with nothing, having lost everything and outlived the world he belonged to.

Toward the end, he wrote his own epitaph. In it he lists what he loved: fine houses and servants, good food and the theatre, and complains of his own frivolity, and says he wasted years.

The line that has survived is an honest piece of self-description. He describes himself as someone who in his life had every sort of good and every sort of bad.

Then the ending. He writes that he would rather not write his own death notice, and then he does anyway.

I like this because it's the opposite of the standard Chinese epitaph, which is a list of virtues. This man lists his follies, and does it with the specific detail of somebody who was clearly there.

There is something more useful in it than humility. He doesn't pretend that his love of good food and fine houses was wrong. He also doesn't pretend the past was better. He just says what he loved and what it cost.

Try writing your own, three sentences, as if someone else would read it. Not the version you would present. The one with the actual tastes in it.

MOJOWAY's file is that kind of epitaph in progress: tastes and follies, dated, in your own voice.