I'd heard through many different paths about Prof. Randy Pausch's Last Lecture given at Carnegie Mellon, but like so many things I want to do, I just hadn't gotten around to checking it out. I remember hearing about his lecture on TV, seeing the book The Last Lecture when it came out, hearing others talk about it... even a good friend gave me the book to read but I hadn't read it.
Tonight, I saw an email sitting in my junk mail folder, which I check every once in a while, and saw an email from Carol Ross's blog. It was an email saying "Your turn" to share about something you're grateful for. That's an easy and a hard question for me because there's tons of things I'm grateful for, and there are 10x more things I should be grateful for but probably go on blindly not recognizing them.
Anyway, I popped over to Carol's blog, made a comment on a post and took a quick scan to see what she'd been writing about. For whatever reason, I saw a link referring to a project Carol worked on for a friend who'd passed away a while back. She'd told me about it, so I decided to pop over there and check it out.
At the bottom of the site is a small YouTube video (246x140) and for whatever reason I had a feeling it was Randy Pausch's talk. It was 1 hour and 16 minutes long, it's late, and I'm behind on the project I wanted to get done tonight. All good reasons, again, not to watch this video... just like I hadn't read the book. Not sure what possessed me to take a different path, but I decided to watch a little bit of it. It's on YouTube, I figured, so I can always go finish watching it if the video's that good.
Well. I just finished the video 10 minutes ago and it has to have been one of the best talks I've ever seen. What caught my attention first is that Randy was a leader in the virtual reality field, something that speaks to that geek and video gamer in me. But more importantly, he was born in 1960, the same year I was born. He went through some of the same childhood experiences I had, like being fascinated watching men walk on the moon on TV in real time as it happened, and experiencing a family "driving" vacation out to Disneyland, something my family did too when I was nine or so. Hearing about his gaming the system to get to ride on the "vomit comet" in order to experience weightlessness set the hook so I had to watch the rest of the lecture.
http://www.youtube.com/v/ji5_MqicxSo
Today, I had lunch with two friends who I've partnered in business with, worked with, worked for and visa versa. During our lunch, one friend, Donald, kept referring to and quoting things he said he'd learned from me over the years. I guess if I squint real hard I can kinda-sorta remember telling him those things, but not really. I told him he was giving me too much credit. I just didn't remember saying any of that to him, but I did agree with the things he was espousing. Maybe those are things that just came across in observation, I don't know. Donald's very observant that way. If I did really help him in the things he said he learned from me, well... then I'm flattered and honored he'd consider them important enough to pick up and use again. What he doesn't realize is I know I've learned 10x from him compared to anything he learned from me. At least that honestly is how it feels to me.
So, in the spirit of sharing what we're grateful for (back to Carol's email), I'm grateful for friends and colleagues who I've worked with and grown from in the process. I'm grateful for the long but completed path to Randy Pausch's Last Lecture video and I’m grateful for what he shared with me in that lecture.
If you haven't watched it, here's my opportunity to pay it forward and share Randy's talk with you.
Social Networks