Famous Last Words

Have you ever wondered what you would do or say if you had only a short time to live? Well, that's the situation that moved FWIW reader, Scott Matis, to call our attention to Randy Pausch, a 47-year-old computer-science professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Last September, Pausch revealed he had terminal cancer and expected to live for a half a year, give or take. Back then he delivered his last lecture called "How to Live Your Childhood Dreams" in which he talked about the journey of his life. Here it is in a now massively downloaded You Tube video in its entirety.

Pausch has three kids and pancreatic cancer which shows up on his CT scan as almost a dozen tumors on his liver. In August, his doctors told him he had three to six months of good health left. As Pausch said, "...you can do the math."  Pausch makes the expected comments about seizing the day and living life to its fullest, but what's really great about this lecture is the sense of humor that Pausch brings to it, despite the grave situation he is in.

"We're not going to talk about spirituality and religion. Although I will tell you that I have experienced a deathbed conversion. I just bought a Macintosh. I knew I'd get 9 percent of the audience with that."

Here's the ABC News version of the lecture if you want something that's been trimmed and edited. Forgive the Pajama Gram intro, if you try to watch it here. And here's what Wikipedia has to say about Randy.

Watch the lecture. Then hug the people you love.