The last lecture (16 page)
Authors: Randy Pausch
Tags: #Biography, #United States, #Large Type Books, #death, #General, #Family & Relationships, #Biography & Autobiography, #Motivational & Inspirational, #Self-Help, #Personal Growth, #Diseases, #Health & Fitness, #Science & Technology, #Success, #Cancer - Patients - United States, #Terminally ill - United States, #Psychological aspects, #Death; Grief; Bereavement, #Pausch; Randy - Death and burial, #Pausch; Randy - Philosophy, #Computer scientists, #Pausch; Randy, #Personal Growth - General, #Computer scientists - United States, #Patients, #Death - Psychological aspects, #Scientists - General, #cancer
The Dreams Will Come to You
F
OR DAYS,
I had worried that I’d be unable to get through the final lines of my lecture without choking up. So I had a contingency plan. I placed the last few sentences of the talk on four slides. If, in the moment on stage, I couldn’t bring myself to say the words, my plan was to click silently through the slides, and then simply say “Thank you for coming today.”
I had been on stage for just over an hour. Given the chemo side effects, the long stretch on my feet, and the emotions involved, I was truly feeling spent.
At the same time, I felt at peace and fulfilled. My life had come full circle. I had first made the list of my childhood dreams when I was eight years old. Now, thirty-eight years later, that very list had helped me say what I needed to say and carried me through.
Many cancer patients say their illness gives them a new and deeper appreciation for life. Some even say they are grateful for their disease. I have no such gratitude for my cancer, although I’m certainly grateful for having advance notice of my death. In addition to allowing me to prepare my family for the future, that time gave me the chance to go to Carnegie Mellon and give my last lecture. In a sense, it allowed me to “leave the field under my own power.”
And my list of childhood dreams had continued to serve so many purposes. Without it, who knows if I would have been able to thank all the people who deserved my thanks. Ultimately, that little list had allowed me to say goodbye to those who meant so much to me.
There’s something else. As a high-tech guy, I never fully understood the artists and actors I’ve known and taught over the years. They would sometimes talk about the things inside them that “needed to come out.” I thought that sounded self-indulgent. I should have been more empathetic. My hour on stage had taught me something. (At least I was still learning!) I did have things inside me that desperately needed to come out. I didn’t give the lecture just because I
wanted
to. I gave the lecture because I had to.
I also knew why my closing lines would be so emotional for me. It was because the end of the talk had to be a distillation of how I felt about the end of my life.
As I wound down, I had taken a minute to review some of the key points of the lecture. And then I offered a summation, but with a twist; a surprise ending, if you will.
“So today’s talk was about achieving childhood dreams,” I said. “But did you figure out the head fake?”
I paused. The room was quiet.
“It’s not about how to achieve your dreams. It’s about how to lead your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you.”
I clicked to the next slide, and a question filled the large screen: “Have you figured out the second head fake?”
I took a breath. I decided to speak at a slightly faster clip than I had before. Maybe if I just talked faster, I thought, I could get through it. I repeated the words on screen.
“Have you figured out the second head fake?”
Then I told them: The talk wasn’t just for those in the room. “It was for my kids.”
I clicked to the very last slide, a photo of me standing by our swing set, holding a smiling Logan with my right arm and sweet Chloe with my left, Dylan sitting happily on my shoulders.
M
Y GREAT
thanks to Bob Miller, David Black, and Gary Morris. I wish to especially thank our editor, Will Balliett, for his great kindness and integrity throughout, and Jeffrey Zaslow, for his incredible talent and professionalism.
The full set of people I must thank will not fit on this page. Fortunately, web pages scroll: please visit
www.thelastlecture.com
for a full list of acknowledgments and attributions. Video of my “last lecture” can also be viewed from that site.
My life will be lost to pancreatic cancer. Two organizations I have worked with that are dedicated to fighting this disease are:
The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network
www.pancan.org
The Lustgarten Foundation
www.lustgarten.org
Randy Pausch is a professor of Computer Science, Human Computer Interaction, and Design at Carnegie Mellon University. From 1988 to 1997, he taught at the University of Virginia. He is an award-winning teacher and researcher, and has worked with Adobe, Google, Electronic Arts (EA), and Walt Disney Imagineering, and pioneered the non-profit Alice project. (Alice is an innovative 3-D environment that teaches programming to young people via storytelling and interactive game-playing.) He lives in Virginia with his wife and three children.
Jeffrey Zaslow, a columnist for the
Wall Street Journal,
attended the Last Lecture, and wrote the story that helped fuel worldwide interest in it. He lives in suburban Detroit with his wife, Sherry, and daughters Jordan, Alex, and Eden.
By Randy Pausch, Professor, Carnegie Mellon with Jeffrey Zaslow.
THE LAST LECTURE
. Copyright © 2008 by Randy Pausch. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Hyperion-books.
Microsoft Reader March 2008 ISBN 978-1-4013-9159-1
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