This is from a 2021 post:
Never lose the childlike wonder. It’s just too important. It’s what drives us.
I’m sorry I won’t be around to raise my kids. It makes me very sad but I can’t change that fact, so I did everything I could with the time I have and the time I had to help other people.
Someone’s going to push my family off a cliff pretty soon and I won’t be there to catch them and that breaks my heart. But I have some time to sew some nets to cushion the fall so that seems like the best and highest use of my time and I better get to work.
—Randy Pausch, October 23, 1960-July 25, 2008Yesterday’s post reminded me of Randy, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2008. He said he was trying to keep a positive attitude, but couldn’t be sure about how he was doing. Then he received this e-mail:
… I happened to have been behind you for a few blocks as you were driving from campus last night (Monday). Before I recognized it was you, I found myself thinking, “Gee that guy is really enjoying the moment…..driving down the road on a warm, early spring evening, top down, wind blowing through his hair, with a smile on his face…..probably headed home to a wife and maybe a little one or two……that’s the way to live life.”. And then you turned left and I recognized it was you. I then found myself thinking, “It’s Randy! He looks so happy! And, in this most private of public moments (alone in his car, yet on the road for anyone to observe), I can’t imagine anyone who IS living life more. No one is more deserving!”. Thanks for sharing your happiness/your life so fully with so many of us…….on campus and in your car. You can never know how that glimpse of you tonight made my day, reminding me of what life really is all about…”
As Nightbirde said in yesterday’s video,
You can’t wait until life isn’t hard any more to decide to be happy.
Amen to that.
January 19, 2025
