Life Lessons and the Randy Pausch Head Fake Theory

"Art impacts on every aspect of our lives whether we are aware of it or not."

The Randy Pausch infamous "Last Lecture" circles the internet like it was brand new, hot out of the stove. He gave the lecture months ago before he didn't have much time left. It's ironic that the hypothetical Last Lecture hits so close to home for us all.

Hypothetically if you were dying, what would you say in your last lecture? For Randy Pausch, that isn't a hypothetical. He was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer and the doctors only gave him a few more months to live.

So walking on the stage at Carnegie Mellon where he was a professor, he delivered his Last Lecture. A lecture that was video taped and downloaded over six million times. The lecture was transcribed into notes and the file has been copied, emailed, posted and read by millions of people. The lecture has been made into a book by Wall Street Journal writer Jeff Zaslow, a writer Randy affectionately considers the fastest writer on earth.

Randy's Last Lecture landed him on CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, ABC World News with Charles Gibson and Good Morning America with Diane Sawyer. He even gave a shorter ten minute version of the lecture on Oprah. To say the least, there are very few people in this world who are up to date on news and society who don't know the name Randy Pausch.

While his audience caught the main thrust of his message and walked away with, "Don't pity me." I walked away with something else. While one reporter indicates that he has watched the lecture twelve times getting something new out of it each time, I have to say that I do too. But, I got one very critical message that will stay with me forever.