Randy Pausch died on July 25, 2008, at age 47. A computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, he achieved worldwide fame and became a bestselling author by the way he celebrated life despite a diagnosis of just months to live due to pancreatic cancer.

It began September 18 2007, when he gave a speech titled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” The context was his university’s “last lecture” series, where professors were challenged to share with the audience something that matters most to them, as if they had only days to live. For Pausch, who spoke just weeks after learning he was suffering from terminal cancer, the context was not hypothetical.

The lecture became a hit as it crisscrossed the globe on the Internet, with more than three million viewers on YouTube alone. “If I don’t seem as depressed or morose as I should be, sorry to disappoint you,” said Pausch, the married father of three young children, at the start of the lecture. He spoke with optimism and humor, convinced that not even the specter of death could keep him from having fun; a buoyancy he maintained throughout his illness. He claimed you couldn’t escape the Reaper but you could still beat him … by living well.

In challenging his audience to really achieve their dreams, Pausch turned our typical success paradigms upside down by saying that achieving our dreams is not really about achieving our dreams. Huh? That’s not a chapter in The Secret is it?

“It’s about how you live and how you love,” he said. He believed he learned more from the dreams he had not achieved. How we travel the journey matters more than whether we get to the exact destination we had in mind. I guess knowing you are about to die will do that, will give that perspective, won’t it? Not necessarily according to Pausch.

“Cancer didn’t change me at all. I know lots of people talk about the life revelation. I didn’t have that. I always thought every day was a gift, but now I am looking for where to send the thank you note.”

Now that’s a challenge. I can’t think of a better place to start than a simple, “Thank you, Randy.”

When Paul Potts, a mobile phone salesman from New South Wales, announced that he was “here to sing opera” on the television show, Britain’s Got Talent – think American Idol with an English accent – it was all that Simon Cowell, his fellow judges, Piers Morgan and Amanda Holden, and the audience could do not to snicker out loud.

Poor guy. Rumpled suit. Gap in his front teeth large enough to drive a red double-decker London tourist bus through. Slouched posture. A near-grimace of self-doubt on his face that was truly painful to behold. An embarrassing moment just head. A car wreck you just couldn’t take your eyes off. So I had to watch.

And then the miracle. A voice suited for the Royal Opera House in London or the Teatro alla Scala in Milan stunningly bursts forth on the opera classic, Nessun Dorma. The loquacious Cowell had no words – Amanda openly wept. Audience members, including some who looked like they were on their way to a U2 or Linkin Park concert and might possibly have never heard of opera, gave Paul one standing ovation after another.

The timid phone salesman found his voice.

Many people seem to simply be going through the motions in life. Too many disappointments. Too many failures. Too little recognition and affirmation.

Of course, it’s possible that some of us have given up dreaming and daring for the simple reason that we have held on to the wrong dreams for too long. We’ve been trying to sing someone else’s song and haven’t found our own calling, our own gifting, our own purpose that transcends gap teeth, rumpled suits, and any other shortcomings real or perceived.

Have you found your voice? When your moment arrives, will you be ready to sing?