Who do you think of when you think of the individuals who have touched you in your life, changed your perspective, or even who you are within your own life? Each of us has those individuals who have touched our lives in ways that are profound, perhaps even life changing. Recently, many of us were touched in that way by a man who unwittingly achieved fame as a result of his last lecture, given at Carnegie Mellon.

Randy Pausch was a Carnegie Mellon professor by profession, and someone who has made me pause to reflect on my own life as well as inspired me to use my life in a way that could touch others in the same way his touched mine. He was considered to be one of the greatest minds in the world of virtual reality and developed a software called Alice that was targeted at encouraging girls to embrace computer programming. There are a variety of other professional accomplishments that Randy was proud of, and although they are remarkable and notable, it was Randy’s passion and lessons for living that ultimately moved me.

For those of you who don’t know who Randy was, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year and survived much longer than most with that dreadful disease. Throughout the remainder of his life and I’m sure for years to come, he would also unintentionally remind millions of people around the world what it can be like to celebrate each day and each moment of your life. Sadly, Randy died on July 25, 2008.

Randy’s messages were simple and often included the kind of wisdom and wonder only found in children; indeed the title of his last lecture was “Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” I’ve tried to identify exactly what it was about Randy Pausch and his last lecture that touched me so deeply. It could have been his topic; I have always had a firm belief that we should never give up on our childhood dreams, that we should always try to embrace that wide-eyed sense of wonder about the world and ourselves the way we do as children. As adults, I think it can be all too easy for us to complicate life and the lessons that come from living our lives. We view the world and our experiences through complex filters as adults. Children are much more attuned to easily dialing into life and breaking it down into simple terms. They are also much more open to doing just what brings them joy, what makes them happy than adults often are. Randy possessed those rare qualities of childhood that we often lose or forget as we become older and mature and feel that we have to act or behave in a certain way to show that we are adults.

Perhaps Randy touched me so deeply because of how his childhood dreams made me reflect on my own. I have a huge list of things to do before I die and I routinely make sure that I cross several off each year. One of Randy’s childhood dreams was zero gravity. That, I can definitely relate to. One of the things I love in my own life almost more than anything else is flying, and I’ve done just about every kind of flying you can, with the exception of zero gravity. I’m with Randy—I don’t really need to be the astronaut or the person flying the plane; I just love the experience of floating. (As a side note, I also love clouds so you can imagine my glee when I went skydiving and actually descended through one of those luscious white puffy clouds. Heaven!) I haven’t yet had the experience of zero gravity, but you can bet that I’m waiting with delight for when the opportunity comes my way!

It certainly did not escape my awareness that possibly Randy filled such an enormous place in my heart because of his particular illness. Pancreatic cancer is an illness I have spent a lot of time researching and also a nemesis for me as it has claimed lives of people I loved deeply. I was definitely one of those individuals who immediately knew what his diagnosis meant in terms of what amount of time Randy was likely to have left in this world.

Randy, in my eyes, seemed to live with the joy-filled wild abandon that most of us only embrace fleetingly. He loved to earn those enormous stuffed animals you see at carnivals and state fairs. He once poured a can of soda all over the back seat of his brand-new car to teach his niece and nephew the lesson that what really matters in life is the people you love and your relationships rather than objects or things. He convinced his parents when he was younger to allow him to paint his dreams on the walls of his room. Those paintings continue to be proudly displayed on the walls of his childhood home today.

One of the lessons that Randy taught us comes from one of the most loved childhood stories of all time, Winnie the Pooh. Randy was acutely aware that he had a finite amount of time left in this world—a fact that is valid for each and every one of us but is easy for us to ignore during most of our day-to-day lives. So here we are, all of us, with this finite period of time we have left in this world. Randy’s challenge to us is to choose—would we rather be a Tigger or an Eeyore? Should we move through the world a bundle of unending excitement and energy at the possibilities the day holds, or should we view our experiences as yet again another worry and disappointment? Oh bother! I think most of us naturally have been both Tigger and Eeyore throughout our lives at different times. Randy Pausch’s natural and exceptional excitement at life makes it easy to imagine him being dubbed the natural stand-in should Tigger ever need to take a day off.

With such a devastating prognosis for his health, Randy could have easily and understandably succumbed to the feelings that accompany such an event. He had a beautiful marriage and three young children. And although by his own admission, Randy did experience all of those feelings, he simply chose to use his time celebrating each moment rather than lamenting those moments that he would never have. The other lesson that Randy taught quite profoundly is the lesson of the brick wall.

Who among us hasn’t had our own version of the brick wall in our lives? Randy’s interpretation of the brick wall is that it is there to teach you how badly you want something in life. What a wonderful way to view the inevitable brick walls we all face within our lives! According to Randy, the brick walls show up in your life so you can prove your dedication to achieving what you really want.

Randy’s description of his task as he traveled on his journey toward the end of his life in regards to his family perhaps touched me the most deeply. He eloquently described how he had a limited amount of time left and that he could spend that time being angry or that he could spend that time doing what he did best—having fun. He talked about how he felt that one day soon his family would figuratively be thrown off the cliff and that while he couldn’t do anything about that, he could resolve to do what he could in the remaining time he had—sew nets to brace their fall. What a wonderful approach and perspective! Such a profound and yet simple shift made such a big difference in how he approached his last days.

So many other simple lessons Randy relayed to us through his last lecture, as well as the subsequent book and numerous interviews. Lessons like working hard, believing the best in everyone, never giving up, and many more. These concepts certainly weren’t unheard of before Randy Pausch’s talk and they aren’t unique to Randy. However, sometimes in life, someone enters your life for a moment, a day, a year, or even a lifetime who manages to speak words to you that change you forever. Those individuals may be, and often are, different people for each of us.

I’ve thought a lot about Randy Pausch since the time I became aware of him. I’ve thought a lot about his illness and his journey, as well as the love that is so apparent within his family. His messages, distilled down to their essence, really remind us to pay attention to the important things in life—living fully and joyfully.

Ultimately, although there are all kinds of reasons that Randy Pausch touched so many in the world, I believe that at the end of the day it was because he not only so authentically spoke from his heart about what he’d discovered about choosing to live each day to the fullest, but he lived those lessons and passed them on to us.

Obviously there are many miraculous people in this world, and I’ve met several of them. But this one individual, a man I didn’t even know, touched my heart in ways that are difficult to describe. And I finally realized last night when I sat thinking about why he touched me so profoundly that he did so because he was more alive in his dying than most living people I’ve ever known.

May Randy’s infectious childlike wonder and excitement about fully living remain with us all!

~posted by Christine