“Do not tell people how to live their lives. Just tell them stories. And they will figure out how those stories apply to them.” — Randy Pausch
The “last lecture” is an established theoretical conceit in scholastic circles, calling on respected thinkers to cram the most important bits of their life’s and work’s wisdom into one talk, as if they’d soon be dead. Perhaps no one has ever taken this on with more profundity or urgency than Randy Pausch, who delivered his last lecture in September of 2007 and who died less than a year later. The Carnegie Mellon computer science professor and virtual reality pioneer knew his pancreatic cancer was untreatable before he stepped up to the podium; for him, this was no hypothetical exercise. His speech, “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams” — which became a runaway hit on YouTube — was funny, upbeat, moving and honest. The book-sized version is all that and more. It’s the collected stories of a regular guy who found love, had kids, taught people and learned from people. It’s an open letter to the kids he won’t get to see grow up. It’s the philosophies of a man who tried to go after the things he wanted. It’s a kick in the ass for dreamers to start doing. Pausch never allows himself a moment to get maudlin or self-pitying, because he didn’t live like that and he ain’t going out like that.
