Dying in Grace and with Courage
September 28, 2007 by Michael van der Galiën
Randy Paush is a computer-science professor, 46 years old, father of three, husband of one. Obviously. Besides that, he also suffers from pancreatic cancer, and only has a few months to live.
As Robert Stein mentions in his introduction at TMV, “For almost everybody else, dying is the most private experience of a lifetime… Not Randy Pausch.”
Indeed. Professor Pausch shares the lesson’s life has taught him, and his final months on this earth with students, his family and with everybody else. This is his website, I encourage you to click on that link and to read some of the articles Professor Pausch links to and to watch the video of the last lecture he gave at Carnegie Mellon: “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.”
It’s an inspiring (and funny) lecture. I’ve listened to and watched it while writing posts for this blog and studying (how’s that for multi-tasking?) and it was a good start of the day.
I’ve read some of Pausch’s speech, and while I do admire his courage and his motivation, I really didn’t get the impression that he was really saying anything new.
I used to be a member of Toastmasters, and as a result I’ve heard many inspirational talks (some better than others). After a while you begin to notice that they all have the same basic premise (”be optimistic and daring!”).
wow, Tom, you really have to read the entire speech, or, better yet, watch it before you judge its quality. I am a very cynical person, and usually I’m not affected by “feel good” emails, lectures, etc., but Randy’s talk was a very special exception. I risk sounding trite, but it changed my life. Please watch his lecture, then tell me if you don’t find it inspirational.
Guess you cant even spell the man name right, but I am sure you have seen it, heard it, done it all and there is nothing new you can learn. You must have reached a stage of Nirvana.
Wow members of Toastmaters - must have a lot of time to kill !!! Do they achieve anything in real life or they just sit around stoned and eating brownies?