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COPING
WITH LIFE'S CHALLENGES
- MPK Kutty |
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Look not mournfully into the past. It
comes not back again. Wisely improve the present. It is
thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future, without
fear, and with a manly heart. These are words of Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow.
Prof. Randy Pausch lived in the spirit reflected by the
above lines. He earned fame for delivering a 'last
lecture' to a small audience at Carnegie Mellon
university on September 18, 2007. He was chosen the Most
Inspiring Person of the Year 2008 by a website featuring
spirituality.
For years, Carnegie Mellon had a “Last Lecture” series.
It has become a common exercise on college campuses.
Professors are asked to consider their demise and to
ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they
speak, audiences can't help but mull the same question:
What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it
was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what
would we want as our legacy?
What was special about his lecture? When he undertook to
speak on the set date in September 2007, this professor
of computer science was just 47 facing deadly pancreatic
cancer. As the date approached, further tests showed
that he was not going to be among the lucky few to
survive and that his days are numbered. Yet he decided
to talk on lessons life had taught him.
Prof Randy, who died shortly afterwards, (July 25,2008)
reached more people than he ever dreamed of. His lecture
became an internet phenomenon. People uploaded his words
of wisdom and inspiring tips for life and forwarded them
to friends. By 2008, his inspiration had reached almost
20 million people. His message was simple and powerful:
"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we
play the hand."
“I'm dying and I'm having fun," Randy said at the
lecture. "And I'm going to keep having fun every day I
have left, because there's no other way to play it." He
felt we all have a decision to makeeither to be fun
loving or going through life with a sad-sack. We have a
choice either to be always looking at the bright side of
things and be happy .The other choice is to go about
mourning through life. But life is too short to spend it
on mourning. The Bible instructs thus: “Whatever is
true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is
pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable if
anything is excellent or praiseworthy think about such
things.” (Phil 4:8,9)
He titled his lecture ' really achieving your childhood
dreams' and said as a child he had dreamt about many
things-- he wanted to be in zero gravity, play in the
National Football League, write an article for the World
Book Encyclopedia.
“My uniqueness, I realized, came in the specifics of all
the dreams from incredibly meaningful to decidedly
quirky -- that defined my 46 years of life. Sitting
there, I know that despite the cancer, I truly believed
I was a lucky man because I had lived out these dreams..
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. If I was able to tell my story
with the passion I felt, I thought, my lecture might
help others find a path to fulfilling their own dreams.”
The underlying lesson, he said, was that if you live
your life the right way, the dreams take care of
themselves. Good conduct consisted of being earnest,
honest, working hard and realizing that brick walls in
life are only there to separate those who really want to
do something from those who just say they want to.
Whether in our career or romantic lives, we call come
upon road blocks and seemingly insurmountable walls. “
But the brick walls are there to stop the people who
don't want it badly enough, They are there to stop the
other people.”
Randy always knew time was a gift. He told students that
time was their most precious commodity, and had to be
explicitly managed. "We all know we have finite money,"
Randy liked to say, "but a lot of us live as if we have
infinite time. You can make more money. You can't make
more time." As Randy's illness made clear to him: "Time
is all we have. And we may find one day we have less
than we think." That is why he wanted to inspire people
to make every day count.
Death was, as he had made clear that magic evening on
the stage, both near and inevitable. But he had made
sure his legacy was set. He had done all that a father
can -- provide for his children and, at the end, let
them know that all he really did in this life was to
love them.
"He showed the importance of living each day well, even
if one is dying, and to never give up on your dreams,"
commented one reader.
“He's inspired me and made me believe that it's not the
material things or the accomplishments that make you
happy or the person you are. Who you are is made up of
each of those little moments you share with the people
you love. Randy, God Bless You and I hope someday I can
be half the man you are. You will be missed!" added
another.
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This page
is updated on March 15, 2009 |
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PRAISE THE ALMIGHTY
10 YEARS CELEBRATION
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