An AI-Written Eulogy

I had AI analyze the 290 blog posts I’ve written over the past 20 years—a total of over 200,000 words—and asked it to summarize my life in a eulogy.

First, reading this eulogy was quite moving. I felt like the AI understood me, maybe even more deeply and thoroughly than any person ever has.

Second, I realized the purpose of writing, especially the importance of writing consistently over the long term. Writing isn’t for others; it’s a record of oneself.

Here’s the eulogy:

If we have to sum up Diff’s life in a few lines, he’s not a “successful” person in the traditional sense. Rather, he was someone always searching, wrestling, believing, and continually drawn back by grace.

Born in Changsha, he grew up in an ordinary family. As a youth, he was sensitive, introverted, and self-doubting, puzzled early on by “What’s the purpose of living?” Later, he left his hometown for Hangzhou, Shanghai, and then further places, working, struggling, and growing in the waves of the internet, design, and entrepreneurship. He loved design, loved creating, loved anything truly beautiful, real, and substantial. Design for him was never just a job, but an internal pursuit. He wanted to do things well and live sincerely.

He once embarked on an entrepreneurial journey, experiencing everything from working out of a residential flat to ringing the bell at the company’s IPO. In midlife, he faced questions about career, identity, and meaning again. Of course, he had his achievements and moments in the spotlight. But if you read his writings and knew him, you’d see he didn’t consider external accomplishments the most important part of his life. He always pondered other questions: What makes good design? What is a right life? What is worth dedicating life to? What is humanity’s true hope?

Later, he became a husband, a father, the dad of three children. Family brought him joy, but also broke him continually. Relationships with children, marriage, parents, siblings, friends helped him see himself more clearly than in his younger days. He saw his pride, impatience, weakness, self-pity, and realized he wasn’t as wise or as good at loving as he imagined. He wasn’t easy to live with, nor was he simple. He had his standards, his persistence, his stubbornness, struggles, and limitations. But he was willing to admit them, bring them to God, and learn to repent, be humble, love again and again.

If we have to say what his deepest identity was in life, it wasn’t as a designer, entrepreneur, writer, or immigrant starting over in America. It was as a Christian. Not a strong or perfect Christian, often weak and stumbling. Faith wasn’t an adornment, social identity, or a polished persona. Faith was the deepest tension and greatest comfort in his life. He had his valleys, his cool-hearted times, doubts, times he couldn’t pray, times he felt far from God in pain; yet in those moments, he knew that what he truly couldn’t do without was God’s mercy.

He liked to write, probably because writing let him be honest. Many write to express points of view, but his writing was more like interrogating his own heart. Work, design, education, marriage, fishing, woodworking, investing, moving, illness, homesickness—these all appeared in his writing. But in the end, he always returned to the human heart, human limitations, writing of grace, writing towards eternity. He knew that what truly mattered in life wasn’t just what one accomplished, but what one was ultimately shaped into.

Looking back on his life, he left behind some works, articles, designs, stories; left some memories, help, love, and debts for family, friends, and colleagues. But if asked what he most wanted to leave behind, he wouldn’t want you to think “Look at how great I was,” but “See God’s patience and grace in someone like this.”

He walked many roads, moved through many cities, did many things, his heart carrying many struggles and hopes. But honestly, he was always a sojourner. This world—he lived earnestly in it, loved it deeply; but his true hope was not here.

Now, his labor has ceased.

May those who love him find comfort. May those who knew him remember he was not perfect but lived earnestly. May people ultimately remember not his achievements, talents, insights, writings, but the God who was slow to anger, full of mercy, and never gave up on him throughout his life.

This is the life of Diff.