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Executive Times |
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2008 Book Reviews |
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The Last
Lecture by Randy Pausch |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Teary
If for some reason you need a
good cry, read Randy Pausch’s The Last
Lecture. The title refers to a presentation Rausch made at Carnegie
Mellon a month after being diagnosed with cancer and given the realistic
expectation that he has six months to live. Search the Internet where you can
find a video all or part of that lecture. The advantage of reading the book
version, which is expanded from the lecture, is that you can put it aside for
a while. Pausch did the lecture to leave a legacy for his young children.
Here’s an excerpt, One warm day, early in our marriage, I walked to
Carnegie Mellon and Jai was at home. I remember this because that particular
day became famous in our household as "The Day Jai Managed to Achieve
the One-Driver, Two-Car Collision." Our
minivan was in the garage and my Volkswagen convertible was in the driveway.
Jai pulled out the minivan without realizing the other car was in the way.
The result: an instantaneous crunch, boom, barn! What
followed just proves that at times we're all living in an I Love Lucy episode.
Jai spent the entire day obsessing over how to explain everything to Ricky
when he got home from Club Babalu. She thought it best to create the perfect
circumstances to break the news. She made sure both cars were in the garage
with the garage door closed. She was more sweet than usual when I arrived
home, asking me all about my day. She put on soft music. She made me my
favorite meal. She wasn't wearing a negligee—I wasn't that lucky—but she did
her best to be the perfect, loving partner. Toward
the end of our terrific dinner she said, "Randy, I have something to
tell you. I hit one car with the other car." I
asked her how it happened. I had her describe the damage. She said the
convertible got the worst of it, but both cars were running fine. "Want
to go in the garage and look at them?" she asked. "No,"
I said. "Let's just finish dinner." She
was surprised. I wasn't angry. I hardly seemed concerned. As she'd soon
learn, my measured response was rooted in my upbringing. After
dinner, we looked at the cars. I just shrugged, and I could see that for Jai,
an entire day's worth of anxiety was just melting away. "Tomorrow
morning," she promised, "I'll get estimates on the repairs." I
told her that wasn't necessary. The dents would be OK. My parents had raised
me to recognize that automobiles are there to get you from point A to point
B. They are utilitarian devices, not expressions of social status. And so I
told Jai we didn't need to do cosmetic repairs. We'd just live with the dents
and gashes. Jai
was a bit shocked. "We're really going to drive around in dented
cars?" she asked. "Well, you can't have just some of me,
Jai," I told her. "You appreciate the part of me that didn't get
angry because two 'things' we own got hurt. But the flip side of that is my belief
that you don't repair things if they still do what they're supposed to do.
The cars still work. Let's just drive 'em." OK, maybe this makes me quirky. But if your
trashcan or wheelbarrow has a dent in it, you don't buy a new one. Maybe
that's because we don't use trashcans and wheelbarrows to communicate our
social status or identity to others. For Jai and me, our dented cars became a
statement in our marriage. Not everything needs to be fixed. If you need a lift to see more
of the positive side of human nature, read The Last
Lecture, even if it leads you to shed a tear or two. Steve
Hopkins, October 20, 2008 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the November 2008 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The Last Lecture.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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