.happy to be.

So today I bought the book, "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch. This is the excert from the cover about what it's about:

"A lot of professors give talks titled “The Last Lecture.” Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can’t help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn’t have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave—“Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”—wasn’t about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because “time is all you have...and you may find one day that you have less than you think”). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.

In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come."

My reasoning behind buying this book? My junior and senior year of high school we talked about giving our last lectures - what legacy did we want to leave? What meant most to us? It was inspired by this book. And even talking about the book inspired me. I decided to dig out my last lecture tonight and review it again. The funny thing is that I probably would not put the same things into my last lecture now, as I did two years ago. What I put in my lecture then was to realize the significance of friends and family, realize the beauty of God's creation, and enjoy the little things. Not that those things don't have significance now, they do - but I've realized that changing what inspires you is only part of maturing.

I look at that video I made two years ago and realize just how much I've grown and learned since then. I have learned so many more life lessons since then that I wouldn't trade for the world - even as tough as some of them are. My world has grown and I see things in a bigger scheme. Intresting to see yourself in the past and realize how much you've grown, how much you've changed.

I'm happy with where I'm at. And I'm excited to read this book!

Goodnight all,
liz rose