The Last Lecture

Randy Pausch, diagnosed with terminal cancer, decided to share a few lessons on what makes life worth living, before  passing from this world. 

Written with Jeffrey Zaslow, The Last Lecture shares his thoughts on life, love, and the pursuit of happiness. 

Dedicated to the childhood dreams in all of us, Randy addresses how to achieve our dreams, and enable the dreams of others.  

Pausch shares how he worked to achieve  his childhood dreams, and how  the extraordinary people he met along the way helped him, starting with his parents.

Despite his grim diagnosis, Randy continued to focus on the positives, and live life to the fullest, by enjoying every possible moment he could with his wife and children.  He realized that he could not remove the “elephant in the room,” but he could live, work, and play around it.

In discussing his life lessons, he talks about the brick walls that we encounter.  These obstacles are opportunities “to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.” 

With anecdotes, he demonstrates that, since you can go over walls, or around them, there’s no reason to keep banging your head against a brick wall in a futile attempt to knock it down.    

In my next post, I’ll share more of Randy’s wonderful advice about how to live life to the fullest ~ even if you are dying of a terminal illness.  In the meantime,  here is the overall philosophy of life which forms the basis for his advice:  

Be a fun-loving Tigger, not a sad-sack Eeyore.  Pack as much fun and laughter as you can into the limited time you have here.  

As Randy realized, everyone dies, but not everyone really knows how to live.