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The famous American playwright Arthur Miller wrote “Death of a Salesman,” which tells of the life and tragic death of a salesman named Willy Lowman. At the age of sixty-three Willy loses his job and in despair commits suicide. He does this in order to secure the financial welfare of his family through his life insurance policy.
I have been a salesman almost my entire life. I can certainly empathize with Willy’s plight. Selling can be a hard job. Often your value is based solely on that month’s, or week’s, or day’s sales production. And if that is all I had to evaluate my life’s work on, I might consider a similar fate. But, I doubt very seriously, when the end of my days come, that much will be said of my sales career. And looking down from above, I will be highly disappointed if it is! I am in hopes that the more important aspects of my life will be recited before those in attendance. Willy Lowman’s mistake was thinking that the end of this life was the sum total of who he was or would ever be as a salesman. His despair in not reaching “greatness,” as he perceived it, drove him to take his own life.
Sadly many of us live out our lives in a similar fashion. We never fully understand that this is just a way station in the big plan. No more than a moment in time. The sum total of a man is not to be found in the honors of this world.

I have a strong testimony that the resurrection is real. Consequently I have never felt the same despair in my life as Willy Lowman. I know that the Savior lives and because of that, after the death of “this” salesman, I have faith that my life will go on and the associations I have made in this life will live on in the eternities. That knowledge helps me keep things in perspective so that I don’t sell myself short of the price already paid for my happiness!