The Last Lecture

I'm back from our vacation to Haida Gwaii (what used to be the Queen Charlotte Islands) and it was everything we had hoped it would be. The weather was amazing -- we had no rain at all, which is a rare event in that area. It's a pristine wilderness that has to be seen to be appreciated.

I'll write more about our trip and show you some pictures in another post. I still haven't made the move from living the adventure to writing about it. I went back to work the day we arrived back and it's taking awhile to get my head back into an organized life.

When I returned, I noticed that Professor Randy Paush, of The Last Lecture fame, (video here) had passed away on July 25.

Those of you who have heard of him will already be familiar with this video of "The Last Lecture," but for those who haven't heard of it (I guess it was a year or more ago that it became such a sensation) will be interested in watching this. There's also a book version available.

I don't know much more about Pausch than what I've seen from the video and Wikipedia, but it's a powerful statement about what it means to live, especially when your future is a short one.

I find that vacations do a great job of reducing my thinking down to paying more attention to what I like and not worrying so much about things that are beyond my control. I'm not sure if that's what the point of Pausch's lecture was, but it resonates with me. As someone else put it, we should live each day like we're on holiday.

Howa, Randy Pausch.

Here's the link to the video.