A Professor Dying of Cancer Brought an Entire Auditorium to Their Feet with His Final Message

I’ll warn you straight up that this is one of the saddest books I’ve ever read, but out of all the books I have read, perhaps only a few have made a bigger impact on my life and work.

I recommend this book all the time, and you should absolutely watch Randy’s “Last Lecture” on YouTube if you can spare the time.

Please, spare the time.

Plenty of professors give talks titled “The Last Lecture,” the idea being that they would reflect on the totality of their lives so far and offer their most life-changing wisdom, the kind of advice that you’d give knowing that this was your very last day on Earth. As it turns out, this was Randy’s last lecture, something he knew going into it.

Randy’s father used to say that whenever there’s an elephant in the room, introduce them, and so he began his original lecture by showing the audience his latest CT scans.

The scans showed an aggressive cancer spreading quickly throughout his body, and he mentioned in the beginning of the lecture that his doctors predicted that he had only a few months to live.

I warned you in the beginning. The actual lecture you’ll see on YouTube is barely sad at all though! Except for maybe the ending and the beginning. But the book that came out of it is nothing less than heartbreaking. And brilliant. And phenomenal. And everything in between.

Like I said, I recommend it all the time, and it’s rarely — very rarely — that anyone will tell me they weren’t profoundly changed by it. I know I was.

With that being said, here are my five favorite moments, or “takeaways” (does “takeaways” even do these justice?) from The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch…

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“Many would expect the talk to be about dying. But it had to be about living.”

My Take: Randy comes right out of the gate with this subversion of expectations, basically reminding his stunned audience that he wasn’t dead yet, and UNTIL he was dead he was going to keep on living.

Right away, everyone watching knew that they were going to be transformed by what was coming next, and I felt the same way reading the book. As though he wasn’t done yet…and neither was I.

And you know something?

Neither are you! For as long as you have the breath of life in your body, you are not done, and yet how many people “live” in complete ignorance of that inalienable power?

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“If you work hard enough, there will be things you can do tomorrow that you can’t do today.”

My Take: The lecture isn’t all about death and dying — it’s not even mostly about that! It’s about how to live, and how to make the most of the experience of being alive.

Here he’s talking about working towards mastery, whatever it is that looks like for you. Randy wasn’t famous before the lecture or the book came out. And I mean he’s not what you’d call “famous” now! But his work still meant something. Progress itself was motivating and meaningful, and it’s that self-efficacy and pride in gaining skills that he was trying to impart here.

It also means that just because you’re going to die doesn’t mean you have an excuse to give anything less than your total effort in this life. Damn, I mean that’s more reason to go all the way!

…

“The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.”

My Take: With each passing year I keep seeing how right Randy is here! Desire is the motivating force of great achievement, and if the desire is there — if you maintain that hunger, that willingness to charge through walls — life will eventually yield to your demands and reward you with success.

But you’ve gotta want it.

Obviously, desire isn’t the only thing that’s required.

“Wanting it” won’t make somebody with an IQ of 90 into a theoretical physicist, no matter how hard they work at it. But sufficient desire can overcome tremendous obstacles, and you have to give yourself a chance to succeed!

It’s entirely (most probably) likely that if you haven’t succeeded yet, one big reason is that you just don’t want it enough. I can’t tell if I’m right about that, of course. But it’s a question you may wish to ponder. I have.

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“Whatever news we get about the scans, I’m not going to die when we hear it. I won’t die the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that. So today, right now, well this is a wonderful day.”

My Take: This right here is my favorite quote from the book — and a very quotable book at that! It’s just…powerful. You can’t “speed read” a passage like that, or you will have missed the point of the entire book.

Read that quote again (if you’d like) and really feel what he’s saying to you. The cloud of death can hang over every day you have left, or you can choose to ignore it until it’s time to deal with it.

This isn’t “running away,” either. It’s simply a choice not to let tomorrow’s sadness darken today’s joy.

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“Live like you’re dying. But at the same time, I’m very much living like I’m still living.”

My Take: You get the point by now – I’m not going to keep telling you to “Live now! Live while you can! Do it immediately and don’t look back!” But in reality, it’s not something you can ever hear too many times.

The only way it’s possible to hear it too often is if it causes you to get overly familiar with the idea, to the point where you think you “get it” and so you start ignoring it because you think you know it already.

The knowledge that today is the only time you have left — no matter how many years you have left — needs to be kept fresh. It needs to keep hammering you again and again and again until you never, ever, EVER forget it. EVER!

Download My Complete Notes from “The Last Lecture” (Free)

Download My Complete Notes from More Than 1,300+ Books ($1)

“Now our lives together had to be squeezed into a few months.”

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“The doctors told me I have three to six months of good health left. That was a month ago.”

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“Kids — more than anything else — need to know that their parents love them. Their parents don’t have to be alive for that to happen.”

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“You’ve got to get the fundamentals right or else the fancy stuff isn’t going to work.”

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“When you’re screwing up and no one says anything to you any more, that means that they’ve given up on you.”

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“It’s unlikely that I’ll ever get to be a father to children over age six.”

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“So I left the store, happier to have 15 minutes than 16 dollars.”

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“When you’re frustrated with people, when they make you angry, that may just be because you haven’t given them enough time.”

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“Hard work is the shortcut.”

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“Go out and do for others what somebody did for you.”

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“Always ask. They will say yes or no, but you will be the kind of person who asks.”

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“I’m aware that Chloe may not have any memory of me at all. She’s too young. But I want her to grow up knowing that I was the first man ever to fall in love with her.”

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“In a sense, the last lecture gave me the chance to ‘leave the field under my own power.’”

Download My Complete Notes from “The Last Lecture” (Free)
Download My Complete Notes from More Than 1,300+ Books ($1)

The Last Lecture is a phenomenal book and I absolutely recommend reading it for yourself. These takeaways give you a very good idea of what’s waiting for you there, but if these interested you, definitely read the whole book.

And of course, if you want more book recommendations from me (from the 1,300+ books I’ve read at the time of writing), subscribe to my free newsletter, The Reading Life, which is enjoyed by 5,000+ people each week.

There’s also my YouTube channel, where I post in-depth book reviews, podcast interviews with famous authors, and tactical videos that will help you earn more money in your business.

With that said, I hope you enjoyed (and profited from) these takeaways, and I’ll be back soon with more great books!

All the best,

Matt Karamazov

P.S. These 100 Books Will DRAMATICALLY Improve Your Life👇

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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