Life is incredibly short. It is also even shorter when the finite span, has an almost definite end. So what do you do, when you have but a few months to live. I don’t know about you, but probably the last thing on my mind, would be undertaking a lecture. This however is exactly what Randy Pausch did, admittedly though, the lecture in question was a pretty special one, “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”. What was an excellent lecture, really turned out to be a kind of farewell message from a Father and Husband to the ones he’d soon be leaving behind. More than that though, it has had a profound affect on me and I’m sure many other people.

Not wishing to state the obvious, but being diagnosed with a terminal illness can’t be easy, but at least it does allow you to get your affairs in order, as well as tell those around you how much they mean to you. The more I think about Randy Pausch, the more I can’t help but think how hard it must be for families, where they lose a loved one suddenly, that person never getting the opportunity to say all the things on their mind, nor being able to get their affairs in order.

Like many, I first came upon the name Randy Pausch watching the Oprah Winfrey show. Actually in my case it was stumbling upon a YouTube clip from the show. Here was a guy dealing with a terminal disease, in his case pancreatic cancer, in front of the world. His appearance on Oprah, was as a result of what has become a bit of a phenomenon, often referred to as “The Last Lecture”. I tracked down the full lecture, given at Carnegie Mellon University and watched it in full on YouTube, to say I was blow away, is pretty much an understatement. Here was a guy who probably looked fitter than me, doing press ups, with but a few months left.

After watching the video in bursts, I did a bit of Googling and found that the video could be purchased from Carnegie Mellon for the princely sum of $7.00 which covers the production and handling costs. I picked up a copy, a) because I wanted to watch the video in something better than YouTube quality and b) I knew that this was a video that I wanted others, especially my older children to see.

A few months after watching the video, I noticed that a book was also available. I added this to my Amazon wishlist, because Christmas was approaching and sure enough it was under the tree waiting for me to unwrap it. It wasn’t until the frantic holidays was over, that I got to sit down and read the book. At 224 pages, it’s not a weighty tome in substance, but is in content. A few times, I found myself reading with a tear in my eye. Much of this is when Randy speaks of his children. Being a father myself, this kind of thing really strikes home and I couldn’t resist look in on my sleeping children and realising what a luck man I am.

So what’s the point of this blog entry you might ask? Certainly I think you should watch the video and maybe purchase the book, but more than that, this is about counting your blessings and realising life is so much more than the material things. With the world in economic ruin, it’s easy to wallow in the doom and gloom being fed to us in the daily media, but we are still part of this amazing thing called life. I never knew Randy, never met him, never got to skim more than the surface of his every day persona, but I’ve seen a side of him, that gives me something to aspire to. Be the best person you can be for yourself, bur most of all be the best person for the other people in your life.

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