Inspiration

Many readers of this blog have forwarded me the link to the story about Randy Pausch, a professor of computer science at Carnagie Mellon University. He was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which in 99% of cases, is fatal within about 1 year of diagnosis.

I cannot do justice to his lectures and his words, you will have to watch these clips for yourself. He is an amazing man, with an incredible outlook and perspective on life. There several more clips, so after you watch the first one, be sure to keep on clicking on the rest.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/LastLecture/

It is great that he is embracing his remaining time on Earth, and still strives to have a positive effect on as many people as he can before his succombs to his disease. It seems he has no fear of death and discourages anyone to pity him (watch the part when he does push-ups on stage during his lecture).

Regarding Dr. Pausch, it is sad that he will not be able to continue to teach others his lessons for life, and that his kids will not have a father as they grow up. However, the silver lining is that the tragedy of his disease allowed him to have his "last lecture" and allowed him to be interviewed by Diane Sawyer, and allowed his story and speech to be viewed by millions of people, and thus, will allow his words, attitude, and messages to live well beyond the 40+ more years that he should have lived (in actuarial terms).