A few days ago Randy Pausch died. He was a professor at Carnegie Mellon who gave his Last Lecture last Fall, soon after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It was recorded and downloaded onto youtube, where it has been viewed by millions. It was also turned into a best-selling book.
I quickly hopped onto the Randy Pausch bandwagon, joining the 10 million viewers of his moving talk about the importance of life and achieving your dreams.
Our network did a few long stories on him, and I was actually supposed to interview him once but apparently that didn't happen.
Anyway, stories like his are those that move me and remind me why I got into the business in the first place... and what life is really all about.
One of the things he talks about is the brick walls we face in life. He says that the brick walls are there not necessarily to stop us but to see how badly we want something. The brick walls help weed out the weaklings. And they help prove to us our own strength.
Randy mentions that sometimes those brick walls are people! He uses his wife, Jai, as his biggest example. He was 39 when he married. He says it took him so long to find someone who he cared more about than he cared about himself.
And their marriage was extremely admirable.
I've been thinking about brick walls recently. What are my own brick walls? And how badly do I want those things that they are standing in front of? Am I willing to do what it takes to knock them down?
If you have an hour or so, check out Randy's inspiring talk. He lived a life - at least in his last years - with his priorities straight. At the top was love.
I hope to do the same.