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Writing Life-Style – Another Great Randy Pausch Video
By Deb Gallardo
It’s no secret that I have become a huge Randy Pausch fan. For those of you who don’t know of him or maybe don’t recognize the name, Randy is the former Carnegie-Mellon University professor who is dying of Pancreatic Cancer. His now famous “Last Lecture” has been viewed on YouTube (as of June 11, 2008) 2,668,135 times. But other incarnations of this last lecture abound on the internet, and all the views totaled as of April 2008 (according to Diane Sawyer) were over 10,000,000. Having said that, I’m guessing everyone reading this has at least heard about this guy.
What does a dying professor’s last lecture have to do with story ideas and writers? Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.
What I think Randy has to offer beyond sheer inspiration, which is a huge thing to begin with, is his heartfelt message for ALL of us — not just his kids, his students, his family — but for all of us: to dream, to be, to do and to achieve according to our passions and those all-important childhood dreams.
Writers work in isolation a good deal of the time. We also must experience life to have something to say in our writing. It should go without saying that our mental health and spiritual health are just as important as our physical health. Unfortunately it NEEDS to be said explicitly.
In a world without hope for so many people, we all need to hear Randy Pausch’s story.
I don’t believe in large coincidences. I believe that things happen in the time they are meant to happen. Consider this: Just twenty years ago, although academe was familiar with the internet, there was only one Windows-based internet service and that was AOL. You almost had to be a geek to be online at that time, that or a new computer owner with AOL pre-installed. CompuServe and Prodigy were DOS-based, for heaven’s sake, and relied heavily on — I want to say — Telnet, but that might be wrong. I just know they were quite different from AOL.
So twenty years ago, cancer treatment advances notwithstanding (and in the area of pancreatic cancer, the funding has been less than stellar, meaning imited funds = limited research), without YouTube, without blogs, without broadband, how many people would have learned about Randy? Would Good Morning America, Time Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Oprah Winfrey Show and ABC’s Diane Sawyer have even known about him, let alone featured him? Probably not.
I believe that Randy and his special life view are having an impact now because our world needs more people with his special qualities, his verve for life and his desire to leave a legacy to his children while also reaching the rest of us in the process.
It’s said that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. Randy Pausch may have lectured to thousands of students over the years, but today he has millions of students who never entered his classroom. I appreciate that he is mostly concerned with only three “students” — his children. But if Randy had been interested in showing only his children who their dad is, he could have set up a video camera at home. His kids may become adults before they understand the depths of who their dad is. Meanwhile, the rest of us get to share him with them.
My favorite quote from Randy is:
“Never, ever under-estimate the importance of having fun. I am dying soon, and I am choosing to have fun today, tomorrow, and every other day I have left.”
Other favorites:
“The brick walls are there for a reason…The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.”
“It is not the things we do in life that we regret on our deathbed. It is the things we do not. Find your passion and follow it.”
“You will not find that passion in things. And you will not find that passion in money. Because the more things and the more money you have, the more you will just look around and use that as the metric, and there will always be someone with more.”
“Don’t let tomorrow wreck today.”
“Somebody’s going to push my family off a cliff pretty soon, and I won’t be there to catch them and that breaks my heart. But I have some time to sew some nets to cushion the fall, so that seems like the best and highest use of my time. So I can curl up in a ball and cry or I can get to work on the nets.”
“This lecture is not about achieving your dreams, it’s about living your life.”
“And this lecture is not for you. It’s for my kids.”
The following YouTube video of Dr. Randy Pausch comes from his charge to the graduates at CMU in 2008. This is a man who truly has his priorities straight and he’s not afraid to make sure other people can learn how to achieve the same thing.
To stay up-to-date on Randy’s condition and to view other Randy Pausch videos, go to these pages:
Randy Pausch’s Official Website (opens in new window)
Randy Pausch’s most recent health and quality of life journal entries (opens in new window)
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2 Comments »
June 16th, 2008 at 9:20 am
Deb,
This is the kind of stuff we all need to hear more of even if it means we have to face our own mortalities.
I am as guilty as anybody, if not more so, of putting things off for the “right” time.
Thanks for not letting Professor Pausch and his essential message be forgotten.
Best,
Jeff
Jeff Joness last blog post..TBIP Week Three In Review: How Will People Know You Exist?
June 17th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Jeff,
Thanks for being such a faithful reader of this blog. I truly appreciate it and your comments!
I check on Randy’s page pretty much daily, and was happy to see that he had a good Father’s Day. Since he hadn’t posted anything new a few weeks, I’ve been anxious about his status.
His book arrived the other day and I hope to have a review of it here in the coming weeks.
I will do all I can to keep interest alive in this ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances. We should all be so ordinary!
Thanks again for stopping by and saying hello.
Deb