Until I got on stage at my last lecture, I had never told students or colleagues at Carnegie Mellon that I had been rejected when I applied there. What was I afraid of? That they’d all think I wasn’t smart enough to be in their company? That they’d take me less seriously?
It’s interesting, the secrets you decide to reveal at the end of your life.
I should have been telling that story for years, because the moral is: If you want something bad enough, never give up (and take a boost when offered).
Brick walls are there for a reason. And once you get over them—even if someone has practically had to throw you over—it can be helpful to others to tell them how you did it.
54
Be a Communitarian
W E’VE PLACED a lot of emphasis in this country on the idea of people’s rights. That’s how it should be, but it makes no sense to talk about rights without also talking about responsibilities.
Rights have to come from somewhere, and they come from the community. In return, all of us have a responsibility to the community. Some people call this the “communitarian” movement, but I call it common sense.
This idea has been lost on a lot of us, and in my twenty years as a professor, I’ve noticed more and more students just don’t get it. The notion that rights come with responsibilities is, literally, a strange concept to them.
I’d ask students to sign an agreement at the start of each semester, outlining their responsibilities and rights. They had to agree to work constructively in groups, to attend certain meetings, to help their peers by giving honest feedback. In return, they had the right to be in the class and to have their work critiqued and displayed.
Some students balked at my agreement. I think it’s because we as adults aren’t always great role models about being communitarians. For example: We all believe we have a right to a jury trial. And yet many people go to great lengths to get out of jury duty.
So I wanted my students to know. Everyone has to contribute to the common good. To not do so can be described in one word: selfish.
My dad taught this to us by example, but he also looked for novel ways to teach it to others. He did something very clever when he was a Little League baseball commissioner.
He had been having trouble rounding up volunteer umpires. It was a thankless job, in part because every time you called a strike or a ball, some kid or parent was sure you got it wrong. There was also the issue of fear: You had to stand there while kids with little or no control flailed their bats and threw wild pitches at you.
Anyway, my dad came up with an idea. Instead of getting adults to volunteer, he had the players from the older-age divisions serve as umpires for the younger kids. He made it an honor to be selected as an ump.
Several things happened as a result of this.
The kids who became umpires understood how hard a job it was and hardly ever argued with umpires again. They also felt good that they were lending a hand to the kids in the younger divisions. Meanwhile, the younger kids saw older role models who had embraced volunteering.
My dad had created a new set of communitarians. He knew: When we’re connected to others, we become better people.
55
All You Have to Do Is Ask
O N MY dad’s last trip to Disney World, he and I were waiting for the monorail with Dylan, who was then four years old. Dylan had this urge to sit in the vehicle’s cool-looking nose-cone, with the driver. My theme-park-loving father thought that would be a huge kick, too.
“Too bad they don’t let regular people sit up there,” he said.
“Hmmmm,” I said. “Actually, Dad, having been an Imaginer, I’ve learned that there’s a trick to getting to sit up front. Do you want to see it?”
He said sure.
So I walked over to the smiling Disney monorail attendant and said: “Excuse me, could the three of us please sit in the front car?”
“Certainly, sir,” the attendant said. He opened the gate and we took our seats beside the driver. It was one of the only times in my life I ever saw my dad completely flabbergasted. “I said there was a trick,” I told him as we sped toward the Magic Kingdom. “I didn’t say it was a hard trick.”
Sometimes, all you have to do is ask.
I’ve always been fairly adept at asking for things. I’m proud of the time I got up my courage and contacted Fred Brooks Jr., one of the most highly regarded computer scientists in the world. After beginning his career at IBM in the Fifties, he went on to found the computer science department at University of North Carolina. He is famous in our industry for saying, among other great things: “Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.” (This is now known as “Brooks Law.”)
All we had to do was ask.
I was in my late twenties and still hadn’t met the man, so I emailed him, asking: “If I drive down from Virginia to North Carolina, would it be possible to get thirty minutes of your time to talk?”
He responded: “If you drive all the way down here, I’ll give you more than thirty minutes.”
He gave me ninety minutes and became a lifelong mentor to me. Years later, he invited me to give a lecture at the University of North Carolina. That was the trip that led to the most seminal moment in my life—when I met Jai.
Sometimes, all you have to do is ask, and it can lead to all your dreams coming true.
These days, given my short road ahead, I’ve gotten even better at “just asking.” As we all know, it often takes days to get medical results. Waiting around for medical news is not how I want to spend my time lately. So I always ask: “What’s the fastest I can get these results?”
“Oh,” they often respond. “We might be able to have it for you within an hour.”
“OK then,” I say…“I’m glad I asked!”
Ask those questions. Just ask them. More often than you’d suspect, the answer you’ll get is, “Sure.”
56
Make a Decision: Tigger or Eeyore
W HEN I told Carnegie Mellon’s president, Jared Cohon, that I would be giving a last lecture, he said, “Please tell them about having fun, because that’s what I will remember you for.”
And I said, “I can do that, but it’s kind of like a fish talking about the importance of water.”
I mean, I don’t know how not to have fun. I’m dying and I’m having fun. And I’m going to keep having fun every day I have left. Because there’s no other way to play it.
I came to a realization about this very early in my life. As I see it, there’s a decision we all have to make, and it seems perfectly captured in the Winnie-the-Pooh characters created by A. A. Milne. Each of us must decide: Am I a fun-loving Tigger or am I a sad-sack Eeyore? Pick a camp. I think it’s clear where I stand on the great Tigger/Eeyore debate.
For my last Halloween, I had great fun. Jai and I dressed up as the Incredibles, and so did our three kids. I put a photo of us on my Web site letting everyone know what an “Incredible” family we were. The kids looked pretty super. I looked invincible with my fake cartoon muscles. I explained that chemo had not dramatically affected my superpowers, and I got tons of smiling emails in response.
I recently went on a short scuba-diving vacation with three of my best friends: my high school friend Jack Sheriff, my college roommate Scott Sherman, and my friend from Electronic Arts, Steve Seabolt. We all were aware of the subtext. These were my friends from various times in my life, and they were banding together to give me a farewell weekend.
My three friends didn’t know each other well, but strong bonds formed quickly. All of us are grown men, but for much of the vacation it was as if we were thirteen years old. And we were all Tiggers.
We successfully avoided any emotional “I love you, man” dialogue related to my cancer. Instead, we just had fun. We reminisced, we horsed around and we made fun of each other. (Actually, it was mostly them making fun of me for the “St. Randy of Pittsburgh” reputation I’ve gotten since my last lecture. They know me, and they
were having none of it.)
Chemo has not dramatically affected my superpowers.
I won’t let go of the Tigger inside me. I just can’t see the upside in becoming Eeyore. Someone asked me what I want on my tombstone. I replied: “Randy Pausch: He Lived Thirty Years After a Terminal Diagnosis.”
I promise you. I could pack a lot of fun into those thirty years. But if that’s not to be, then I’ll just pack fun into whatever time I do have.
57
A Way to Understand Optimism
A FTER I learned I had cancer, one of my doctors gave me some advice. “It’s important,” he said, “to behave as if you’re going to be around awhile.”
I was already way ahead of him.
“Doc, I just bought a new convertible and got a vasectomy. What more do you want from me?”
Look, I’m not in denial about my situation. I am maintaining my clear-eyed sense of the inevitable. I’m living like I’m dying. But at the same time, I’m very much living like I’m still living.
Some oncologists’ offices will schedule appointments for patients six months out. For the patients, it’s an optimistic signal that the doctors expect them to live. There are terminally ill people who look at the doctor’s appointment cards on their bulletin boards and say to themselves, “I’m going to make it to that. And when I get there, I’m going to get good news.”
Herbert Zeh, my surgeon in Pittsburgh, says he worries about patients who are inappropriately optimistic or ill-informed. At the same time, he is upset when patients are told by friends and acquaintances that they have to be optimistic or their treatments won’t work. It pains him to see patients who are having a tough day healthwise and assume it’s because they weren’t positive enough.
My personal take on optimism is that as a mental state, it can enable you to do tangible things to improve your physical state. If you’re optimistic, you’re better able to endure brutal chemo, or keep searching for late-breaking medical treatments.
Dr. Zeh calls me his poster boy for “the healthy balance between optimism and realism.” He sees me trying to embrace my cancer as another life experience.
But I love that my vasectomy doubled as both appropriate birth control and an optimistic gesture about my future. I love driving around in my new convertible. I love thinking I might find a way to become the one-in-a-million guy who beats this late-stage cancer. Because even if I don’t, it’s a better mindset to help me get through each day.
58
The Input of Others
S INCE MY last lecture began spreading on the Internet, I’ve been hearing from so many people I’ve known over the years—from childhood neighbors to long-ago acquaintances. And I’m grateful for their warm words and thoughts.
It has been a delight to read notes from former students and colleagues. One coworker recalled advice I gave him when he was a non-tenured faculty member. He said I had warned him to pay attention to any and all comments made by department chairs. (He remembers me telling him: “When the chair casually suggests that perhaps you might consider doing something, you should visualize a cattle prod.”) A former student emailed to say I had helped inspire him to create a new personal-development Web site titled “Stop Sucking and Live a Life of Abundance,” designed to help people who are living far below their potential. That sounded sort of like my philosophy, though certainly not my exact words.
And just to keep things in perspective, from the “Some-Things-Never-Change” department, an unrequited crush from high school wrote to wish me well and gently reminded me why I was way too nerdy for her back then (also letting slip that she’d gone on to marry a real doctor).
More seriously, thousands of strangers also have written to me, and I’ve been buoyed by their good wishes. Many shared advice on how they and their loved ones have coped with matters of death and dying.
A woman who lost her forty-eight-year-old husband to pancreatic cancer said his “last speech” was to a small audience: her, his children, his parents and his siblings. He thanked them for their guidance and love, reminisced about the places he had gone with them, and told them what had mattered most to him in life. This woman said counseling had helped her family after her husband died: “Knowing what I know now, Mrs. Pausch and your children will have a need to talk, cry and remember.”
Another woman, whose husband died of a brain tumor when their children were ages three and eight, offered insights for me to pass along to Jai. “You can survive the unimaginable,” she wrote. “Your children will be a tremendous source of comfort and love, and will be the best reason to wake up every morning and smile.”
She went on: “Take the help that’s offered while Randy lives, so you can enjoy your time with him. Take the help that’s offered when he’s no longer here, so you can have the strength for what’s important. Join others who have this kind of loss. They will be a comfort for you and your children.” This woman suggested that Jai reassure our kids, as they get older, that they will have a normal life. There will be graduations, marriages, children of their own. “When a parent dies at such an early age, some children think that other normal life cycle events may not happen for them, either.”
I heard from a man in his early forties with serious heart problems. He wrote to tell me about Krishnamurti, a spiritual leader in India who died in 1986. Krishnamurti was once asked what is the most appropriate thing to say to a friend who was about to die. He answered: “Tell your friend that in his death, a part of you dies and goes with him. Wherever he goes, you also go. He will not be alone.” In his email to me, this man was reassuring: “I know you are not alone.”
I have also been moved by comments and good wishes from some well-known people who got in touch as a result of the lecture. For instance, TV news anchor Diane Sawyer interviewed me, and when the cameras were off, helped me think more clearly about the touchstones I’ll be leaving for my kids. She gave me an incredible piece of advice. I knew I was going to leave my kids letters and videos. But she told me the crucial thing is to tell them the specific idiosyncratic ways in which I related to them. So I’ve been thinking a lot about that. I’ve decided to tell each of my kids things like: “I love the way you tilted back your head when you laughed.” I will give them specific stuff they can grasp.
And Dr. Reiss, the counselor Jai and I see, has helped me find strategies to avoid losing myself in the stress of my periodic cancer scans, so I’m able to focus on my family with an open heart, a positive outlook and almost of all my attention. I had spent much of my life doubting the effectiveness of counseling. Now, with my back against the wall, I see how hugely helpful it can be. I wish I could travel through oncology wards telling this to patients who are trying to tough it out on their own.
Many, many people have written to me about matters of faith. I’ve so appreciated their comments and their prayers.
I was raised by parents who believed that faith was something very personal. I didn’t discuss my specific religion in my lecture because I wanted to talk about universal principles that apply to all faiths—to share things I had learned through my relationships with people.
Some of those relationships, of course, I have found at church. M. R. Kelsey, a woman from our church, came and sat with me in the hospital every day for eleven days after my surgery. And since my diagnosis, my minister has been very helpful. We belonged to the same swimming pool in Pittsburgh, and the day after I’d learned my condition was terminal, we were both there. He was sitting by the pool and I climbed up on the diving board. I winked at him, then did a flip off the board.
When I got to the side of the pool, he said to me, “You seem to be the picture of good health, Randy.” I told him: “That’s the cognitive dissonance. I feel good and look great, but we heard yesterday that my cancer is back and the doctors say I only have three to six months.”
He and I have since talked about the ways I might best prepare for death.
“You have life insurance, right?” he said.
; “Yes, it’s all in place,” I told him.
“Well, you also need emotional insurance,” he said. And then he explained that the premiums of emotional insurance would be paid for with my time, not my money.
To that end, he suggested that I needed to spend hours making videotapes of myself with the kids, so they’ll have a record of how we played and laughed. Years from now, they will be able to see the ease with which we touched each other and interacted. He also gave me his thoughts on specific things I could do for Jai to leave her a record of my love.
“If you cover the premiums on your emotional insurance now, while you’re feeling OK, there will be less weighing on you in the months ahead,” he said. “You’ll be more at peace.”
My friends. My loved ones. My minister. Total strangers. Every single day I receive input from people who wish me well and boost my spirits. I’ve truly gotten to see examples of the best in humanity, and I’m so grateful for that. I’ve never felt alone on this ride I’m taking.
VI
FINAL REMARKS
59
Dreams for My Children
T HERE ARE so many things I want to tell my children, and right now, they’re too young to understand. Dylan just turned six. Logan is three. Chloe is eighteen months old. I want the kids to know who I am, what I’ve always believed in, and all the ways in which I’ve come to love them. Given their ages, so much of this would be over their heads.
I wish the kids could understand how desperately I don’t want to leave them.
Jai and I haven’t even told them yet that I’m dying. We’ve been advised that we should wait until I’m more symptomatic. Right now, though I’ve been given just months to live, I still look pretty healthy. And so my kids remain unaware that in my every encounter with them I’m saying goodbye.