I finally got around to reading Randy Pausch’s “The Last Lecture” and was very touched and inspired by his parting tales, reflections and words of wisdom specifically collected for his young children, shortly before he passed from cancer.
It’s an interesting (and scary) exercise to think about: if you knew you’d be leaving this world in a matter of months or weeks, what stories, advice and insights would you want to leave behind for loved ones and the world in general?
It makes me think about starting to compile an ongoing Google doc or note on my phone of what I’d want to leave behind… I’m also encouraged to start writing daily emails to my 3-year old daughter Ariel for her to read in the years to come.
========================
Here were the gems that I found to be particularly helpful and inspiring:
On the importance of quality dinner table discussion:
“We didn’t buy much. But we thought about everything.” There are 2 types of families:
1) those who need a dictionary to get through dinner;
2) those who don’t. “If you have a question, then find the answer” “Open the encyclopedia. Open the dictionary. Open your mind.” (look it up!)
On the benefit of dropping other people’s wisdom:
“I quote my father to people almost every day. Part of it because if you dispense your own wisdom, others often dismiss it; if you offer wisdom from a third party, it seems less arrogant and more acceptable.”
“Never make a decision until you have to”
Fun idea:
Let your kids paint whatever they want on their bedroom walls for self-expression, creativity, imagination and story telling!
On the benefit of tough coaches, parents, mentors and friends:
We all needs friends and coaches and mentors that will “ride you hard” — “when you’re screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they’ve given up on you.” “Your critics are often the ones telling you they still love you and care about you, and want to make you better.” “There’s a lot a talk these days about giving children self-esteem. It’s not something you can give; it’s something they have to build. You give them something they can’t do, they work hard until they find they can do it, and you just keep repeating the process.”
On quality time with children:
“Whenever [my sister’s] kids were with me, we had just two rules:
1) No whining
2) Whatever we do together, don’t tell Mom.
Not telling Mom made everything into a pirate adventure. Even the mundane could feel magical.” “So my time with Chris and Laura has become even more precious. They gave me the gift of being a presence in their lives through their pre-teen and teen years, and into adulthood”
On education:
“[In education] a better number one goal was this: I wanted to help students learn how to judge themselves. Did they recognize their own abilities? Did they have a sense of their own flaws? Were they realistic about how others viewed them? In the end, educators best serve students by helping them be more self-reflective. The only way any of us can improve is if we develop a real ability to assess ourselves.” “I’ve tried hard to come up with mechanical ways to get people to listen to feedback. We’d do peer feedback every two weeks. This was a completely collaborative class with students working in four-person teams. They were dependent on each other and their grades reflected it. We would take all of the peer feedback and put together a spreadsheet. I would create multicolored bar charts in which a student could see a ranking on simple measures such as:
1) Did his peers think he was working hard?
2) How creative was his contribution?
3) Did his peers find it easy or hard to work with him? Was he a team player?
Especially for 3), what your peers think is, by definition, an accurate assessment of how easy you are to work with.”
Advice for young girls about to enter romantic relationships:
“When it comes to men who are romantically interested in you, it’s really simple. Just ignore everything they say and only pay attention to what they do.” :)
Good cliches to heed:
1) Dance with the one who brung you (it’s a reminder about loyalty and appreciation);
2) Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity (Seneca, 5 B.C.);
3) Whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right!;
4) Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? (reminder to not focus on little issues, while ignoring the major ones)
On Risk-taking:
“I encouraged students to attempt hard things and to not worry about failing. I wanted to reward that way of thinking. So at the end of the semester, I’d present The ‘First Penguin Award’ to the team that took the biggest gamble in trying new ideas or new technology, while failing to achieve their stated goals. In essence, it was an award for ‘glorious failure,’ and it celebrated out-of-the-box thinking and using imagination in a daring way. The other students came to understand: ‘First Penguin’ winners were losers who were definitely going somewhere.”
On the lost art of hand-written Thank You Cards:
“Despite all that is going on in my life and with my medical care, I still try to handwrite notes when it’s important to do so. It’s just the nice thing to do. And you never know what magic might happen after it arrives in someone’s mailbox.”
On bad vs. good apologies:
“Two classic bad apologies:
1) ‘I’m sorry you feel hurt by what I’ve done.’
2) ‘I apologize for what I did, but you also need to apologize to me for what you’ve done.’
Proper apologies have 3 parts:
1) What I did was wrong;
2) I feel badly that I hurt you;
3) How do I make this better?”
On Challenges…and sharing Secrets:
“It’s interesting, the secrets you decide to reveal at the end of your life.” “Brick walls are there for a reason. They give us a chance to show badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people. 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 [others] how you did it.”
On leaving advice and stories behind for others:
“[Diane Sawyer] 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.” “Lately I’ve been making a point of speaking to people who lost parents when they were young. They told me they found it most consoling to learn about how much their mothers and fathers loved them. The more they knew, the more they could still feel that love. They also wanted reasons to be proud; they wanted to believe that their parents were incredible people. Some of them sought specifics on their parents’ accomplishments. Some chose to build myths. But all had yearnings to know what made their parents special. These people told me something else, too. Since they have so few memories of their own memories of their parents, they found it reassuring to know that their parents died with great memories of them. To that end, I want my kids to know that my memories of them fill my head.”
======================
