Skip to main content

The last lecture


It has been a while since I last wrote a blog entry. Past month was very hectic and sometimes life moves so fast that it does not give time to look back at it. It is however a silly thing to do as moving fast never allows us to enjoy the life as it goes and some day suddenly we feel that we don't have much time left to live. Anyway this post of mine is not about my bullshit philosophy but about a great book I read recently. The book is called "The Last Lecture". It is written by Dr Randy Pausch. He was a professor in the computer science department in Carnegie Mellon before he died on july25, 2008. He died of pancreatic cancer and this book is about the last lecture he gave after he was diagnosed of this terminal illness and was given just few months to live. It is a book about life from the eyes of a person who had just few days to live among his loved ones. It is about what matters in life and it is like a last letter he wrote for his kids to read it long after he is gone.

Let me brief you about some of the salient features of the book.

Fulfilling your childhood dreams - The author talks about his dreams and how he accomplished them. This is the main focus of his book and It shows the character of a man on deathbed talking about the dreams he had and how he fulfilled them. He talks about his dream quest of flying in zero gravity and being an Disney Imagineer. He talks about how he achieved everything he dreamt of while growing.

Helping others to fulfill their dreams - Being a teacher he talks about how he helped his students who worked with him and how he contributed in some small or big way fullfilling their dreams.

Dreams come to you - This is the crux of the book and his lecture where he said he beleived in the power of the karma and he talks about how working hard and honestly bring your dreams to you. There will always be a "Brick Wall" between you and your dreams and they are meant to test you , your effort is the price which you need to pay for your dream.

In short it was about how he lived his life and presents us as it is to pick some gems out of it. However if you read it carefully it is a voice of a dieing husband and a dieing father engraved in few pages for his kids to know who the person really was long after he is gone. Now as he is no longer there I feel talking to him through his book was a life changing experience..and I have started valuing my gift of life and my dreams a lot more..

Comments

Rinzu said…
we all need dream to live for...
else life would ne meaningless...
nice post...

:)

Popular posts from this blog

Morality..

Have you ever pondered why is morality necessary in life? Why our parents want us to be truthful, honest and humble. Why do we hate liars and hypocrites? Why there are numerous stories about the virtue of Good and how every time good wins over the evil in the long run. Are we good because there is an almighty god looking over us and we will be burnt in hell if we do something bad. Are people in general good because they are afraid of God. To me we are more good than evil because that is a logical thing to do. "Good" here i must emphasize symbolizes the greater good of our civilization and human race. It may be relative on an individual basis but on a macro scale being good or having all the positive qualities we hear about is logical and in fact very necessary for the very survival. Imagine a world where its OK to rob your neighbor and bring home their money and goods. With the same logic it should also be OK when one of our neighbors mugged us up. You can clearly visualize ...

Its my Life

Whats the best way to lead a life? We hear and read a lot about it everywhere. People from different walks of life have a different take on it. An optimist will tell you to risk and be adventurous, a pessimist will tell you to be vary of bad times and always look for security, a youngster will tell us to live life king size, whereas the seasoned uncle will tell us to cherish every moment. So it is pretty much clear that its almost impossible to follow everything as at times it is so confusing if we are to live with a specified philosophy of life. I believe as we grow up we take much from our environment and it shapes our behavior but deep down inside there is something which is unique to us. It may not be very obvious but it is there nevertheless. Life is about sharing this common world with our friends, with neighbors, with every living being around, with deep blue seas and lush green grasslands, the lofty mountains and the hot deserts, the infinite stretch of the cosmos and that hid...

What is it being an Indian?

What is it being an India n? What is this thing which I call my mother land... my nation. Why am I told to respect it and love it. What does it represents? Is it just a block of land where I was born , a place whose culture and history shaped my thinking , whose laws and forces protected me and whose system allowed me to be able to write this up here the way I want to.. In Discovery of India Nehru explains that a country is the sum total of the aspirations of its inhabitants. A nation is build by all the social, political ,economic and environmental forces which shapes its behavior and belief systems and thus forms the backbone of its culture. Long ago when Man started his journey from the heartland of Africa he was looking for new places to support the growing population. The humans in next thousands of years spread across the nook and corner of this planet and formed the basis of the nation states as we saw them today. This brings us to the question of Why do we need nations in fir...