One of Randy Pausch's unfufilled childhood dreams was to play for the NFL. He got the opportunity to practice with the Pittsburgh Steelers recently, and he kicked a field goal on his first try. (Ken Andreyo, Carnegie Mellon University )
The Last Lecture: A Love Story for Your Life
Diane Sawyer Talks to Randy Pausch and His Family Seven Months After Inspiring Lecture By GEOFF MARTZ and SAMANTHA WENDER April 9, 2008
What would you say if you knew you were going to die and had a chance to sum up everything that was most important to you?
That's the hypothetical question posed to the annual speaker of a lecture series commonly known as "The Last Lecture." But for Randy Pausch, the charismatic young professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, the question wasn't hypothetical.
The 47-year-old father of three small children had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer -- and given six months to live. Friends and colleagues flew in from all around the country to attend his last lecture. And -- almost as an afterthought -- the lecture was videotaped and put on the Internet for the few people who couldn't get there that day.
That was all it took.
Somehow amid the vast clamor of the Web and the bling-bling of million-dollar budgets, savvy marketing campaigns and millions of strange and bizarre videos, the voice of one earnest professor standing at a podium and talking about his childhood dreams cut through the noise.
The lecture was so uplifting, so funny, so inspirational that it went viral. So far, 10 million people have downloaded it. And thousands have written in to say that his lecture changed their lives.
If you had only six months to live, what would you do? How would you live your life? And how can all of us take heart from Pausch's inspiring message to live each day to its fullest?
Do watch the video. Hope it changed how you look at life and what really matters in life.
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