Skip to main content

Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

During Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat when I came out to ask the audience for donations, I always talked about how the Empress Theatre is all about dreams. Leo Ware's dream of restoring the Empress Theatre and producing plays, our dreams of expanding from the Empress Theatre to the Oquirrh Hills Performing Arts Complex, the dreams of our actors and other volunteers.

Randy Pausch was also about dreams. If you haven't seen this video yet, you need to. Yes, it's an hour and 16 minutes long, but you need to watch it anyway.

One of my early mentors once told me to live my life as if each day might be my last, but also to live as though each day was the first day of the rest of my life. That was always good advice, but Randy Pausch tells it with a little more punch than most. Today really was his last day, and he knew it was coming when he gave "the last lecture."

The same mentor taught me "Someone has everything you want in life, and they will gladly give it to you if you but give them what they want." Randy Pausch was about fulfilling not only his dreams, but of fulfilling the dreams of those around him.
And he wasn't satisfied to do just one dream at a time! He went after quantity as well as quality.

As a boy, he wanted to "be" Captain Kirk. This man, in real life, exuded all of the leadership, courage, and stength of Captain Kirk. I only hope that when my turn comes, that I may go as boldly as he!

Comments

Unknown said…
I love this video! What an incredible man! By the way...I have changed my blog address

www.thoughtsofliz.blogspot.com

Popular posts from this blog

Agregate Demand and the US Savings Rate

In my last post, I touched on the differences between the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes and Ludwig von Mises. Immediately aftward, I was directed to this story in the New York Times. It seems that americans are saving more instead of spending the their money on consumer goods. Up until this downturn, about 70% of the US Economy was consumer spending, and in 2005, the US Savings rate was negative 2.7%. The "stimulus" is supposed to stimulate spending to get money moving again. But it isn't happening as planned. Folks are saving for down payments because they don't expect to get zero down home mortgages; they're saving to replenish their decimated retirement and college funds. The austrians believe that the best way to "fix" the economy is to allow the "malinvestment" created by the false signals in the economy (from the open market ops and deficit spending) to be liquidated and the resources repurposed into better investments. It...

Glenn Beck is NOT Captain America!

Background Over the last week or so, I have been "debating" on Facebook with several people who either support Donald Trump unquestioningly, or who argue that the impeachment inquiry is a fraud, witch hunt, hoax or otherwise a made up coup attempt by the Democrats to remove Trump. There are others that have posted memes or status updates that promote certain Republican talking points regarding the inquiry. These discussions have included people I have known for decades, people I have never met, and anonymous commenters, as well as current sitting Congressmen and other candidates for office. Some of these discussions have been productive. Others, not so much. On one of these discussions, which has ranged over several different posts on Facebook, the person I have been arguing with has taken the position that Trump's call for an investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden in the July 25th call with President Zelensky is justified, and therefore not grounds for impeachment. Hi...

Haiti Adoption Story

Most of us have seen or read stories of adoptions of Haitian children following the earthquake last month. Some of the stories have had a positive slant (the charity has saved children...) other's have had a negative slant (the "missionaries" who kidnapped and tried to smuggle 33 children across the border into the Dominican Republic). At a family gathering yesterday, my wife heard a story about a couple that was "finally" able to adopt a child they've been trying to adopt for about 4 years. As the story was related to me, this couple had originally been matched with this child about 4 years ago, but the adoption was cancelled when the parents of the child took her back and parented her themselves. After about three years of caring for the child, the natural parents returned her to the orphanage because both of them had been diagnosed with tuberculosis; a death sentence in Haiti. (Mortality for untreated TB is about 67%.) The adoption was finalized just befo...