We're nearly halfway through our flight and I felt compelled to give my thumbs a workout on the keyboard of this BlackBerry device. Don't worry, of course I disabled the wireless mode! I am not endangering anyone's safety via "interference with the aircraft's navigation and communication systems!"
I picked up a copy of today's Wall Street Journal at the airport. The WSJ is my favorite newspaper, just for the record. I do not receive it via home delivery, however - I don't have time to read it and it ends up just stacking up off to the side of my home office / study. This makes me sad, seeing all that great reading material coming in and me not being able to read it. Someday I will subscribe to it again. That will be a happy day. No, currently I receive but one newspaper at home, the New York Times Sunday edition. Have you ever seen it? It is nearly the size of a decent-sized city's phone book! And out each and every Sunday...how do I find time to read it? It's not easy, but if I can scrape out about an hour for it sometime Sunday, then work on it a bit each day throughout the week (usually at breakfast - nourishment for body AND mind!), I do OK at keeping up with it.Anyhow, enough about newspapers in general (if you can't tell, I like newspapers), my intent is to write a little bit about one article I read in today's WSJ.
Oh, and before I go any further, please let me apologize in advance for the inevitable typos that are in this dispatch - writing on this mobile device does not allow me, to the best of my knowledge, to spell-check, and when I send this message, it will post immediately to Garblog. Sure, I can go back in later to do edits one I am at a "regular" computer, but if you read this before I do so, please bear this in mind.
The article of note that I read was about terminally-ill former professor of computer science Randy Pausch. Perhaps you've heard of him. He is quite famous now because of the acclaim surrounding his new bestselling book entitled The Last Lecture. I had heard of the book (I try to keep tabs on what books are selling well just out of curiosity and because in addition to liking newspapers, I also like books! As a sidenote, and to "pile on" to my earlier material about The New York Times Sunday paper, one way I do so is by reading The Book Review in said paper, which is most probably my favorite single part of the periodical.) via several sources, including a piece on Fox News yesterday I happened to see while waiting for my boss while he was at an appointment, and from Barb, who I think had seen something about the man (Pausch) and his book on a separate television broadcast. Barb went on to say that she wanted to read the book. Before personally viewing the feature on Fox yesterday and now having read this lengthy feature article on the same topic (sidenote: co-author of The Last Lecture with Pausch is WSJ reporter / writer Jeffrey Zaslow. Zaslow wrote the feature in today's WSJ. See how it is all fitting together?), I was mildly interested in learning more about the book (this is how I would describe one of the initial stages I go through with regard to acquiring reading materials - does what I know about the material in question make me want to find out more about it? If so, this would eventually possibly lead me towards acquiring a copy of the material, be it a book, magazine, etc.), but now that I have personally learned of the man and the book, I certainly want to read it!
Earlier I alluded to Pausch's problem - diagnosis with a terminal illness, leaving him with only months to live. Without trying to re-write the entire WSJ article, he decided to deliver a "last lecture" to his students and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh and to make the very most of the time he had left with his wife and 3 young children. I am familiar with the concept of giving a "last lecture"; one of my favored professors at the University of Nebraska, Dr. John Janovy (link to his biological laboratory webpage can be found amongst those posted here at Garblog) delivered one while I was an undergraduate (I was unable to attend due to a schedule conflict, but upon my request, he sent me a written copy for my reading pleasure), but his was notional, he wasn't staring in the face of having just a few months of life on this planet. In fact, Dr. Janovy continues to teach and influence young people to this day, more than 5 years on from his "last lecture". Pausch really did walk away after his last lecture, to devote his remaining days to his family, that and palliative medical treatment. I think that makes a huge difference in what a person would choose to include in that last lecture.
There are other books along the same vein out there; what comes to my mind right now are Tuesdays with Morrie and The Five People You Meet In Heaven (both by Mitch Albom), and of course Lance Armstrong's It's Not About The Bike and Every Second Counts. The lesson bears repeating and we all need a reminder now and then (I certainly do): make the most of your time on this Earth, because it is certainly finite.
One other thing about stories like Pausch's - people in similar circumstances sometimes remark something to the effect that their "death sentence" is really a blessing, because it allows them to say goodbye to people in a way of their choosing, unlike people who are killed in car accidents or die of cardiac arrest (I would add to this the perils of folks in my line of work, one risk of which is dying on the field of battle far from home). These people are taken suddenly and immediately. Regrets of omission or commission in a life lived up to then cannot be addressed in an earthly fashion, thereby, I would argue, are denied something that Pausch and others terminally ill are granted.
"May you live every day like it was your last" (but marshal enough to allow yourself to live for a long time, if you are fortunate enough to do so!)
GJS
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