Disney, Brick Walls, and Realizing your Childhood Dreams

For me to say that a book is revolutionary, or has the power to impact lives for the betterment of humankind is shocking. First I don't read much, other than class books, and I generally tend to read more fiction than non-fiction. But this book, The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch with Jeffery Zaslow kept popping up on my radar. It was mentioned in a sermon I had heard, it was all over the shelves of bookstores and it has been talked about all over the place. With a car trip to Memphis coming up, I downloaded the audio book from iTunes (I know it may be cheating but I read slow and well I was driving... not a good call to read and drive). I first must say this book and the actual lecture the book is roughly based on are wonderful. The book is a expanded version of what was covered in Pausch's "Last Lecture" at Carnegie Mellon University where he was a professor of Computer Science. I know I a few months late in picking this book up, I am glad I did. The book covers a great deal of topics and lessons that we all can learn from.

The book breaks down into several sections. It opens with Pausch talking about his childhood dreams and how he was able to achieve almost all of them, not becoming an NFL player being the only one. He weaves these stories together not for his own glory, but to move the theme of the book to where a majority of the writing is devoted, Helping others achieve their dreams and ideals to live by. I must admit I love stories. I love to hear people tell stories to teach lessons, and Pausch does a wonderful job of weaving his stories with lessons for life that all people can take and should apply to life.

The main lesson I took from this book was to live life. To find your passion and go after it. Pausch says we have a choice to make in life, we can either be a tigger or an eeyore (not the exact quote just the essence of it). We can not change the cards we are delt just the way was play them (again another quote from Pausch). This is something we all need to be remined of.

The Last Lecture can be found at "The Last Lecture"
A page on CMU's website - Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

A final thought, Pausch in the book talks about the movie The Natural and it's final scene. The hero, Roy Hobbs played by Robert Redford with a battered body, his magical bat shattered. Stands at the plate with the world watching and hits a final home run, winning the game, exploding the lights, crushing the dreams of the evil team owner, and walking off into the fabled sunset with the women of his dreams and their son. Pausch's book is that dream realized.