21 4 / 2011
I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about him before, but Randy Pausch is one of the most inspirational human beings I think I’ve ever heard of. What’s so great about him, I think, is that he is so normal. He’s obviously very smart, and he has definitely done really cool things in his life, but no one would be giving him a second glance if he did not handle the tragedy of cancer the way he did. He’s an ordinary family man who faced a great difficulty with extraordinary strength, personality, and positive attitude.
If you’ve never heard of The Last Lecture, you should really look into it. It’s a speech entitled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams” that he gave at Carnegie Mellon University when he knew he had only months to live . He then wrote a book based on the principles listed in the speech. The above video is a very brief version of the speech that he gave on Oprah, but it hits all of my favorite points just the same. If you have time, I strongly encourage you to watch the full speech (it can be found on youtube), but at least take the time to watch the 10 minute video shown here. I promise you, you won’t regret it.
“Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want”
