Even before Ponce de Leon and his famous search for the fountain of youth, man has been on a quest to live forever.
Randy Pausch was no exception. He did not want to die, and yet he knew he was going to. Randy lived his "pre-death" no differently than he had always lived his life. He showed us an example with not only his last couple of years, but his whole life, of how to be alive, fully. Randy taught not only his family about love, courage and saying goodbye, he taught us all.
For Randy, part of saying goodbye is trying
to remain optimistic. After his diagnosis, Randy's doctor gave him advice: "It's
important to behave as if you're going to be around awhile." Randy was already
way ahead of him: "Doc, I just bought a new convertible and got a vasectomy.
What more do you want from me?" This was taken from a wonderful article by Jeff Zaslow, who originally
wrote about Randy's speech, about how Randy embraced saying "goodbye" by saying
"HELLO!" creating new memories right up to the end.
In actuality all of us are living our
"pre-death" from the moment we are born. We are going go die, it is
inevitable. What is also so, is that none of us know exactly when. If we take
anything away from Randy Pausch's Last Lecture and life, we would do well to
take away how well he lived and commit to living our own lives so fully engaged,
free of free and fully playing the game every moment. For you see, even in the
last couple of years, when fevers rackd his body and chemotherapy and cancer
made him so ill, Randy was never afraid. He was committed to being alive and
show his children exactly what that meant.
Dr. Pausch, whose proudest professional achievement was creating a free computer programming tool for children called Alice, was an improbable celebrity. A self-professed nerd, he pushed his students to create virtual reality projects, celebrated the joy of amusement parks and even spent a brief stint as a Disney “Imagineer.'’
Last September, Dr. Pausch unexpectedly stepped on an international stage when he addressed a crowd of about 400 faculty and students at Carnegie Mellon as part of the school’s “Last Lecture” series. In the talks, professors typically talk about issues that matter most to them. Dr. Pausch opened his talk with the news that he had terminal cancer and proceeded to deliver an uplifting, funny talk about his own childhood dreams and how to help his children and others achieve their own goals in life. He learned he had pancreatic cancer in September, 2006.
Sitting in the audience was Carnegie Mellon alumnus Jeff Zaslow, a columnist with The Wall Street Journal, who wrote about the speech. Media outlets and bloggers linked to the story, and more than 10 million people have since watched an Internet video of the talk. The lecture was translated into seven languages, and Hyperion published a book version (written by Jeff Zaslow and Randy Pausch) that became a New York Times bestseller.
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Below is the video of Randy's Last Lecture given at Carnegie Mellon. I made the border pink in honor of Randy who was always looking for ways to have or create immense fun in everything he did. Even though his last lecture (a Carnegie Mellon faculty tradition) was poignant, it is about FUN, being ALIVE and CREATING a life filled with your dreams made manifest. After all, this "Last Lecture" was given by Randy really for only three people - his three small children.
I invite you to watch it, or rewatch it if you have already seen it, and look to see what can Randy teach you?
(c) 2008 Amy Flynn
www.allabout-energy.com
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