The sentence they will use

When a headmaster retires in Assiut after many years at the same school, the town does not remember his timetable.

It remembers one thing. He knew every pupil's name. Or he never once raised his voice. Or he quietly paid the fees for the boy whose family could not. Out of thousands of days, the people he served will keep a single line, and they will repeat it at weddings and funerals for years.

It is never the whole truth. A working life does not fit into a sentence, and the sentence often leaves out the parts he was proudest of. But that is how memory works. We shrink people down to the thing we can carry.

The same happens to every shop, brand and trade. The customer does not hold the full list of what you offer. They hold a caricature, a kind one if you are lucky. The baker who always adds the extra loaf. The tailor who is late but never wrong. The company that picks up the phone.

So it is worth asking the question early, while there is still time to shape the answer. If people gathered one day to mark what you had done, what would they write above the door? What line would they use to describe you to someone who had never met you?

And is it the line you would choose?