The Last Lecture

This is a great book! I downloaded it from i-tunes and listened to it. Now I am listening to it again with Andrew.

What a great guy. Randy Pausch, is a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. (Yeah for my hometown.) He was diagnosed with terminal Pancreatic Cancer last summer and was told he had 2-3 months of good health left. He is 47 and has a wife and three kids.

Last September he gave a "last lecture" at Carnegie Mellon entitled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”— it wasn’t about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because “time is all you have...and you may find one day that you have less than you think”). It was about living.

Someone put it on You-Tube for those that had to miss the actual lecture and about 10 million people viewed it and were inspired by it. It kind of took off and he and a friend wrote the ideas into this book and it was published in April. He and his family have had a lot of media coverage and he really is the nicest guy. He is funny and positive and sensible. He has survived longer than expected and even has a web site letting us know how he is doing. He really just wanted to voice his feelings and thoughts for his kids - that was his main motivation.

I connected with him because he loves learning and loves Disney among other things....I love his sense of humor. Here is their Halloween photo this year.
I have thought about the randomness of this life and how some live long and some don't, some live stupid and some don't.

If you are looking for a great book to make you think about life and make you grateful for your own, check this one out. It is at Costco now and of course on i-tunes.