I happened to read ‘The Last Lecture’ by Randy Pausch because a friend of mine had swapped the book for my ‘The Valkyries’ by Paulo Coelho. ‘The Last Lecture’ is much more than an anecdote of a man living his final months knowing he has barely months to live. It is on being a spouse, a father, a professor, an acquaintance, and a man. It's about dealings with parents, spouses, children, friends, colleagues, students. It's on passion, belief, enthusiasm, kindness, and almost certainly much more than I was able to take hold of from reading it. There are quite a few parts which I think are signs of jollity, unpleasantness, hilarity, poignancy.
Randy Pausch stood in the company of four hundred spectators at Carnegie Mellon University to deliver a last lecture labelled ‘Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,’ on 18 September 2007. With slides of his CT scans beaming out to the viewers, he told them about the malignancy that is getting through his pancreas and that will claim his life in a matter of months. He, on the stage that day, was young at heart, full of life, fine-looking, often with a smile, intriguingly witty, seeming indestructible, although this was a pithy moment, agreed as he himself.
Randy’s lecture has become an observable fact, as has the book he wrote anchored in very similar ethics, celebrating the dreams we all do our utmost to make certainties. Randy, dejectedly, lost his fight to pancreatic cancer on 25 July 2008, but his bequest will go on with to enthuse us all, for generations to move towards.
‘The Last Lecture’ goes further than the now-famous lecture to rouse us all to subsist each day of our lives with reason and delight.
We, Randy Pausch avers, cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.
Countless professors give talks titled ‘The Last Lecture.’ Professors are asked to consider their downfall and to mull over on what matters most to them. And as they tell, spectators can’t help but muse on very similar question: What insight would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?
Randy Pausch, a professor of Computer Science, Human Computer Interaction, and Design, when asked to give such a lecture, didn’t have to envisage it as his last, since he had of late been diagnosed with life-threatening cancer. But the lecture he gave - ‘Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams’ - wasn’t about on its last legs. It was about the magnitude of overcoming hurdles, of making the dreams of others possible, of grabbing hold of every moment (as ‘time is all you have...and you may find one day that you have less than you think’). It was a rundown of the lot Randy had come to accept as true. It was about existing.
The professor, in this paperback, has combined the humour, inspiration, and intelligence that made his lecture such an experience and given it an ineffaceable form.
In burying myself in ‘The Last Lecture,’ I was intensely enthused and stimulated by Randy Pausch’s weighty message about making our dreams come true. He is a muse and I can definitely relate to parts in his lecture specially when he refers to the best of the gold’s at the bottom of barrels of crap because every so often we must get through intricate experiences to attain our dreams. I really consider that, his fulfilment of his dreams, by giving ‘the last lecture,’ Randy Pausch was able to focus not on the pessimism that is linked with loss, but instead was able to hold life in his arms and live every minute he had with no regrets, sharing that message with one and all. The message to follow our dreams in the face of the ramparts that may get in our way but be able to recognise those ramparts are not meant to keep us from our dream, but instead they are there to thrust us forth towards our imaginings and goals. Randy Pausch is an extraordinary man and it brings me down that he is no longer with us, though, his inspiring message lives on.
The lecture was so heartrending. To vicariously see a man who is dying in such good spirits stirred me to see life in my own way. Having read the lecture, it made me reflect that I must stop condemning people so much or carping and just understand them for who they are. It may be some truth in the old chestnut, but life is short and does necessitate to be lived to the fullest. I am aware of that I subsist for the future, but after reading the book I perceive that I should live my life in the now at times and just take pleasure in life and have fun. Thus, when my time comes and my voyage on life is ended, I will know that I have enjoyed my life and it has been well lived.
I painstakingly enjoyed reading the book. Have your say at inkslinger215@live.com. /Panay News Sunday
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