Be Like Randy Pausch: There Isn`t Much Time Left!

I don`t know if that`s true in your particular case, but this is certain: one day in the future - could be far off, could be next week - it will be my and your last day on earth.

How would you feel if you knew when that day was coming: would you feel depressed? In a hurry to get things done? A bit of both?

There`s a guy who knew, more or less, when his time would be up. His name was Randy Pausch and he was a professor of computer science at a university in Pennsylvania. From what I can read of him, a very popular guy, with a wife he loved and three small children. So far, so American Dream, right?

In August 2006, he found out that he had pancreatic cancer, which later moved to other parts of his body. The following August, knowing it was terminal and that there`d be no miracle recovery, his doctor gave him three to six more months of health. He lasted a further eleven months after that.

If you`d been in his position, what would you have done with the time you had left? How would you have reacted to someone telling you your wonderful life was about to end? I`d like to think I`d be noble and productive if that happened to me, but a little voice in my head that knows me very well tells me it`s more likely I`d be self-pitying and, strange as it may sound, suicidal.

Randy Pausch isn`t known where I`m writing from, in the UK, but became famous in the US in September 2007 when he did a `Last Lecture` at his university entitled `Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams`. He stood in front of several hundred students, everyone in the room knowing he only had a short time left, and delivered an hour-long speech about life lessons. How to live your life and how to spend your time here.

It wasn`t mawkish, it wasn`t inappropriately sentimental; the first thing he did was address the fact that he was dying and knew it. There was no talk of pioneering treatment giving possible cures, religion or life after death (which was okay with me; I wouldn`t have bothered watching if there had been), just a heart-felt lecture about what was really important to him.

The lecture`s available in full on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo and you could do worse than invest an hour of your time watching it. What strikes me watching it is the lack of self-pity he feels. Which isn`t to say he isn`t a little bit angry about the situation; I mean, who wouldn`t be? But he realises that life is a lottery and sometimes `It Could Be You!` doesn`t quite carry the meaning you might hope for. He also brought out a book based on the contents of the lecture.

The thing is, though, we`re *all* like Randy. He knew that his time was coming up and that he only had a certain number of weeks to live in which he had to make sure his wife and children would be okay after he was gone.

We`re all in the same position, though. In 100 years none of us (barring something pretty special from the scientists who believe they can find ways to make us live forever) will be around and none of us will be remembered. So we`ve got to make the best of what we have, right here, right now!

That`s what I keep telling myself every Monday morning, anyway…