Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
I was honestly worried that this would be exactly the sort of book that I can’t stand. “Guy nears death, which buys him some gravity that he wouldn’t otherwise have earned.” I.e., Tuesdays with Morrie Volume 2: Morrie's Back ... And Getting Even.
Fortunately, Pausch doesn’t try to justify The Last Lecture on the basis of his being a Wise Dying Man. If you’ve not already watched Pausch’s last-lecture video on the web (I have not): he’s a computer-science professor at CMU, dying of pancreatic cancer. The Wikipedia suggests that his cancer is now terminal. Pausch, being a rigorous sort, knows he’ doesn’t have long to live: only 4% of pancreatic-cancer patients make it to five years. He believes he’s had an extraordinary life, he wants to reflect on how blessed he is, and he feels like sharing with us how he got there. Result being: if you make it through this book without crying once, I will pay you. I certainly couldn’t make it through with dry eyes.
The beginning and the end of The Last Lecture are the real tear-jerking parts: we meet Pausch, we meet his family, and we learn about his upcoming death. At the end we hear, for just a moment, about the tears that he and his wife have shed before (and after) bed — after the bedroom door has closed and the kids are asleep. That’s one of the most heartbreaking parts of it all: Pausch’s children don’t yet know about his illness; the parents are waiting until he becomes symptomatic to tell them. In the meantime he’s preparing: delivering a last lecture to impart some life lessons, getting his life insurance in order, buying a sports car, going on fun trips with his wife … having a good time, and trying not to think too much about his own death.
Between the watery-eye parts is a set of straightforward and eminently practical life lessons for the reader: write thank-you notes; try harder than the other guy; be honest with everyone. Each moral is backed by a story from Pausch’s own life, and — honestly — perhaps a bit too much of “look at how excellent a guy I am”: every lesson he’s teaching is of the form “someone out there was good enough to do me this favor, so now I’m passing it on to you.” This structure may be what Pausch calls a “head fake.” In sports, a head fake is where you trick the other guy into thinking you’re going one way when in fact you’re going the other. In his life, Pausch uses his own brand of head fake to make his students think he’s teaching them one thing when in fact he’s teaching them another. The book self-admittedly contains a few head fakes, and I think a few others are hidden. One of the hidden head fakes is the final lesson: “Help out other people however you can, just like I have with this book.”
It’s charming; you almost have to end up admiring Pausch. And you have to wish his family well. I’m sure they’re going to miss him.
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