Randy Pausch

Publishing KidsOutAndAbout.com is part of my personal mission to spread reason among parents. My strategy is to say things in such a way that they seem to be uncontroversial, and to say it warmly and cheerfully so that it's easy for them to believe that they *already* believe what I'm writing, and I'm just bringing their attention to it. I'm pleased to say that my Friday morning e-newsletter goes out to 6000 readers right now. This is from this morning's newsletter:

Have you heard of professor Randy Pausch, at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh? Carnegie Mellon asks their great professors to think deeply about the important things in life, and to present hypothetical "Last Lectures." Pausch's Last Lecture had a profundity that some of the others hadn't, because Pausch has terminal pancreatic cancer. Pausch, who is a computer science professor and developer of virtual reality technology, has three children, ages 5, 2, and 1. His Last Lecture, entitled "How to Live Your Childhood Dreams," became a sensation around the world in the past week and a half, and thousands of people have already contacted him to tell him what a difference his talk made in their lives.

Jeffrey Zaslow reported on his talk in last Thursday's Wall Street Journal. Zazlow's article (which really got me thinking last week) can be found here:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB119024238402033039.html

I found a link to the video presentation of Pausch's talk here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=362421849901825950&hl=en

Randy Pausch's web site says it will have an online link to the typed article soon.

Why was the talk so affecting? Professor Pausch only has a few months left of life, but he is happy with how he is using it. His Last Lecture reminds us how easy it is to put aside what is really important in life for "later"--which rarely comes. Pausch says that he has made sure to fulfill all of his childhood dreams, which in his case include winning giant stuffed animals at carnivals, walking in zero gravity, designing Disney rides, and writing a World Book entry.

He reminds us that even though it's so easy to say no to things our children want to do that are slightly inconvenient, he was profoundly affected by his parents' permission to decorate the walls of his bedroom any way he wanted; in his case, it was with etchings of mathematical equations.

Reading about Professor Pausch helped me reorient my own priorities as a parent: If (God forbid) my own child were dying of cancer in 40 years, what would I want *her* to say about her childhood in her Last Lecture? And how does that affect my day-to-day decisions and actions with the girls? It occurred to me that every action that we take, at root, is either good for us or bad for us: Even if only in a small way, it is either life-sustaining, or life-destroying. Professor Pausch reminds us that in even the smallest actions, we should choose life, for ourselves and our children. I have been finding it an interesting, and useful, filter with which to view the world this week. Think about it.