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.”
