Integration III Spring 2022 Giorgi Kharchilava Professor Wagner Moreau FYS Spring 2022 4 March 2022 The Conundrum of a Fulfilling Life Well, I’m not exactly sure how to write this. No one has ever had to write their own eulogy; I don’t think anyone’s ever been self-knowledgeable enough to do it, especially not an 18-year old kid who doesn’t even know the cause of his death. But I’ll try. I think I kind of have a handle on the person I am (or was), and hopefully I’ve at least thought about my principles enough to put together something coherent. So here it goes, the eulogy for Giorgi Avtandyl Kharchilava, son of Avtandyl Irodion Kharchilava and Ia Tamaz Iashvili. Firstly, let me note that I am writing this eulogy as if my life lasted only as long as it has until this point. I’m not doing this to be gruesome or depressing but rather because I have no clue what my life will look like in even a few years, let alone decades down the line. Giorgi Kharchilava, though his life was short, lived a quite fulfilling life. He loved a lot of people, and he liked to spread himself wide; put his fingers in many different pies, if you will. Though his death would never have been stress-induced, this doesn’t mean he lived life stress-free. The idea of large tasks often daunted him, and he was never the best at managing time. If he could say one thing about how he wished his life had gone differently, he would have said the following: “I wish I could have set my mind to one thing where I knew that I put in my complete effort; that I simply could not have done it better.” He always felt that he scrambled to complete everything at the last minute, and that his talents carried him to success even though they shouldn’t have. Perhaps he would’ve managed time better if he had learned of the benefits mailto:gkharchi@nd.edu of mindfulness. Just one hour per day to decompress and think about nothing might have made the other 23 hours more productive, and therefore him more productive as a whole. As Pico Iyer put it in “Why we Need to Slow Down our Lives,”: “The very people, in short, who have worked to speed up the world are the same ones most sensitive to the virtue of slowing down.” (Iyer, “Why we Need to Slow Down Our Lives”, Moreau FYE Week 1)Here, Iyer speaks of the Fortune 500 and Tech Ceos. The leaders of these companies that have helped create an information superflood in the modern age realize that taking a break from said flood can make your relationship with it more productive, if not more fulfilling. Perhaps if Gio had seen this virtue he would have gone to sleep less at 3 AM, and not shown up to his meeting with his Moreau Professor essentially half asleep (apparently, after the meeting he went back to his room and slept until 2:30 PM). Life can be unforgiving in this regard sometimes. If you don’t have a good plan, it can hurt you. However, sometimes the opposite is the case: life will give you a better plan than you could have ever thought of. Take the case of the late great Father Theodore Hesburgh, the best president in Notre Dame’s history. His life is a fascinating study of the intersection of fate and steadfastness. Said he, on teaching returning soldiers from WWII instead of being a military chaplain as he had hoped, “It wasn’t how I was expecting to serve my country, but I was serving it my own way.” (Hesburgh, Moreau FYE Week 2) Hesburgh’s commitment to teaching and students led him to a very unexpected spot: the Presidency of Notre Dame. But, he took this opportunity with unbelievable vigor and intelligence. He had not chosen exactly to be President, but having been President, he chose to do it to the best of his ability. In all fairness, maybe Gio never did things to that extent, but he does deserve credit in some regard. He was a pianist, and used his talents to accompany fellow Notre Dame students and even put on a full-length piano https://ideas.ted.com/why-we-need-a-secular-sabbath/ https://notredame.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=10159379-7eca-4549-8581-ab9500c9ecd9 recital for the people of the University, an event he hopes to repeat in the coming years. Before Notre Dame, he frequently gave free concerts in retirement homes and even livestreamed a few during the Covid pandemic. You can see pretty clearly to this point, even without discussing his specific morals, that Gio is a bit of a pessimist at times. He knows that he is notable, exciting, talented, smart, and capable. However, like his parents and those around him, he often chooses to downplay this in the hope of getting better. Maybe this was helpful to him in life. Indeed, St. Augustin famously quipped “Dissatisfaction (restlessness) is not a bad thing…indeed it’s the best thing about us.” (Three Key Questions, Michael Hines, Moreau FYE Week 3) But even this, then, should harbor a positive realization. Yes, Gio was restless and self-deprecating at times, and this might have made him a better human being. So there, he might have got something right in his life. Hooray! So, what were Gio’s plans in life? What did he want to do? Gio loved the phenomena that describe the universe. Faith and God remain a mystery to him as he passes on, but his main goal in life was to master and help drive forward our understanding of one of the most fundamental subjects: physics. He was a physics major, and though it was hard (especially the stupid labs), he went to bed every night fascinated with the process of problem-solving. Even if he never found that great research question or methodology that would’ve helped him change the world, the root cause of his love for physics – the yearn to solve problems – will be with him always, and can last through many hardships. As the Center for Career Development says, “If you are in a major you enjoy, you will be more motivated to go to class, get better grades, and overall be happier - all of that leads to better post-graduate outcomes.” (“Navigating your Career Journey,” Center For Career Development, Moreau FYE Week 4) https://undergradcareers.nd.edu/navigating-your-career-journey---moreau/ Gio, clearly, lived his life very introspectively. He always assumed that this was a good thing, something that made him a better person. However, this is not always the case. Psychologist Tasha Eurich writes: “However, Grant and others have also come to realize there’s no relationship between introspection and insight. This means that the act of thinking about ourselves isn’t necessarily correlated with knowing ourselves.” (Tasha Eurich, “The Right Way to be Introspective”, Moreau FYE Week 5) It’s important to be honest with yourself when introspective; sometimes Gio would rush to any answer his brain could provide, when in reality the solutions to his problems ran much deeper and were much more complex. But most importantly, Gio lived his life to be with others. He loved talking to people, getting to know their stories, and sharing his own with them. He knew that every good thing about him was a credit to the fabulous mentors he had in his life, and he hoped to pay the wonderful treatment he was given as a kid to as many people as possible. Gio always tried to live by a motto similar to what Pope Francis said: “Quite a few years of life have strengthened my conviction that each and everyone’s existence is deeply tied to that of others. Life is not time merely passing by, life is about interactions.” (Pope Francis, Why the Only Future Worth Building Includes Everyone, Moreau FYE Week 7) At the end of the day, that’s the essence of Gio’s life. Every time he helped a fellow student with their homework when he didn’t have to, every time he gave free piano concerts both organized and informal, every time he sang in a choir or a musical, he did it for the people he was surrounding himself with. He did it because he loved and cherished his relationships, and his appreciation and love for those around him will hopefully never die. https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/P_Silvia_Evaluating_2011.pdf https://ideas.ted.com/the-right-way-to-be-introspective-yes-theres-a-wrong-way/ https://ideas.ted.com/the-right-way-to-be-introspective-yes-theres-a-wrong-way/ https://www.ted.com/talks/his_holiness_pope_francis_why_the_only_future_worth_building_includes_everyone/transcript https://www.ted.com/talks/his_holiness_pope_francis_why_the_only_future_worth_building_includes_everyone/transcript