"The Last Lecture"

I watched the TV show "Prime Time" tonight.... Diane Sawyer interviewed Professor Randy Pausch.... and they discussed his now-famous "Last Lecture." Amazing story about one truly remarkable man.

My husband had seen The Last Lecture on the Internet, but I hadn't read more than a few sentences here and there in newspaper articles. Seeing the professor and his family on TV tonight was very humbling, to say the least, and even though the story brought tears to my eyes, it also made me smile.

Makes you wonder.... if one person can face life head-on, even when he knows the end of the road is coming up quicker than he would like, then surely every one of us has the same capability. You just have to be able to know you can do it, to live in the moment, to enjoy every blessed day as if it truly were your last blessed day.

I intend to buy a copy of Professor Pausch's book, "The Last Lecture." I'm sure it will become one of my most-treasured books, one that gets a special place on my bookshelf and comes down from time to time to be re-read and re-visited.


My husband and I were talking about an article in today's Chronicle --- the newspaper had a photo of school children in Kenya, dressed in their school uniforms and on their way to school. They weren't walking along a quiet stretch of land.... the students were running through a street filled with exploding cars, burning debris and soldiers with guns.

My question to my husband was how can we all, as citizens of this planet, see that and not realize that we are endangering the children of this world who could quite possibly make their way through school, through college, and maybe find the cure for cancer?! Do we need armed soldiers between a child's home and their schools? Soldiers with weapons, and countries with nuclear bombs, and dictators whose goals are to increase their personal wealth while everyone around them scrambles to feed their children? Is this any way to make a planet keep spinning through space?

I guess my real question is "Will we ever learn?" This is just one planet, people...... we are all sharing just this one blessed planet!!!!! And we're all the same....... inside, we are all the same, and until we stop plastering labels on everyone, we will always be different.

And that is my two-cents-worth for today.