Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Last night I finished my second book, "The Last Lecture" by Dr. Randy Pausch. He gave "The Last Lecture" at Carnegie Mellon University on 9/18/07 - which was immediately picked up by utube and has been seen by millions of viewers world wide. He died from pancreatic cancer on July 25, 2008 at the age of 47. His last lecture was entitled "How to Really Achieve Your Childhood Dreams" - throughout the book and the video he chronicles his childhood dreams - both the ones he achieved and the ones he didn't. Ironically since his speech in 9/07 he has been invited to fulfill those few dreams that hadn't yet been fulfilled: playing with the NFL (he joined the Pittsburgh Steelers in a day of regular practice in on 10/6/07), being on the crew of Starship Enterprise(he was invited by film director of the newest Star Trek film - to be released in '09 to have a small role on the film); he met Sting backstage after a concert; his other dreams became realized under his own power in earlier years of his life. Some of them include: being in zero gravity, authoring an article in the World Book encyclopedia, winning stuffed animals and being a Disney Imagineer - you'll have to read his book and/or watch the utube video to find out how he achieved them...

Some of my favorite quotes from the book are, "brick walls are only there to show you how badly you want things" - the more you want it - the more willing you are to do whatever it takes to climb over, crawl under, smash through or transcend the walls to reach your desire. Another is, "experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted" - this is certainly a truism.

Randy's goal in the last lecture, aside from leaving a legacy for his children, ages 2, 5, and 7 and wife, Jai, was to provide an inspiration for others to fulfill their childhood dreams as he had had the luck to do. He states, "And I had lived out my dreams, in great measure, because of things I was taught by all sorts of extraordinary people along the way". He chronicles the effect his parents had on him (he says he won the parent lottery), his football mentor - Coach Graham (who taught the fundamentals, was anti-coddling, and believed that sports were a metaphor for how to live life), Brown University Professor, Andy van Dam, who he credits as being his "Dutch" uncle - someone who is willing to give you honest feedback -and helped him with his tough love advice about some of his character flaws.

During his entire lecture Randy cracked jokes, laughed and poked fun at himself and life in general - a refreshing and bold attitude for someone who knew they were dying soon. He did succumb physically a few days ago - as he and his family knew he would - and oh what a contribution he made during his last year. Although successful in his career as a professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon he achieved far more than he or his family ever dreamed by being willing to share his wisdom, joy and passion with others in a public forum.

And so I am inspired to make a list of my childhood dreams and reflect on what I have achieved or not....I don't have a death sentence hanging over me -and yet we all know that our days in our physical bodies are limited - so no better time to begin than today. I am reminded that Grandma Moses didn't start to paint until her older years. So what dreams do you have and are you willing to get through brick walls to achieve them?