Dying to live

Randy Pausch is dying of pancreatic cancer. In fact, he only has about two to four months of healthy life left. He is a professor at Carnegie Mellon, and recently participated in the Last Lecture series.

The Last Lecture series is an US initiative, run by various universities who invite their best professors to give a lecture, as if it were their last. What lasting impression would you want to leave your students? What should they take with them into the rest of their lives, as you end yours?

In Professor’s Pausch’s case, of course, being invited to do the Last Lecture requires very little imagination: He used it as a good-bye to his students and university, since he has realised that death is at the door.

Watch the YouTube video. It is a 10-minute summary of the two hour talk, and it will leave you inspired and thoughtful. Pausch is in amazingly high spirits. He has lived a good life, and has managed to achieve a lot of his childhood dreams. Achieving your childhood dreams is actually the topic of his talk.

He has three children under the age of five, who do not yet know that he is ill. He knows that his death will be painful, unpleasant and difficult to watch for his family. He is taking this final time to prepare himself for the end, as well as all those close to him.

Which begs the question: Why wait? If you knew you had a limited time left with your family, what would you say? What would you do? What would you like to explain? What words of advice would you want to leave behind?

We live in volatile times, and our end can be premature. I am not advocating that you quit your job to write poetry full time, even if that is your secret desire, but at least write one good poem. Make a list of things that are feasible to do, say or experience, and start checking it off. Think about what people will say about you — not at your funeral, but five years later. Think if you have made an impact, and if not, start today. You don’t need to change the world. But you do need to positively affect your world.

My own father died of pancreatic cancer. On his diagnosis, he was given six months to live, but died in five days. So we never got to discuss his end, or the future thereafter. We never got to discuss his reflections on life, his regrets, hopes for us or for his grandchildren. I regret being so shocked by the diagnosis, that the only way for us to deal with it was to ignore it, To this day, if I find a pile of his papers, or anything written in his handwriting, I eagerly hope that it is a word of wisdom, an advice from the past. It never is.

If I were to die today, I have left a bit of myself online. Hopefully, someone in my family would have the foresight to copy it (will Google be around forever?) and preserve it for my daughter. I have notebooks filled with ideas, inspirations, scribbles and budgets. She will see a lot of who I was if she ever wants to decipher them. If she waters my garden, there will be a lot of me there too. My library collection will offer big clues. As will my box of unfinished projects.

Of course, I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon. But I do plan on living each day a bit more consciously, and a bit more purposefully. So I will be easy to remember, and difficult to forget.

I am aiming high ;-)