Monday, May 19, 2008

Life lessons from a dying man

Tonight I heard a piece on abc news that caught my attention. At Carnegie Mellon University's commencement, Randy Pausch, a computer science professor with terminal cancer, gave a five minute speech about life lessons. You can listen to his speech here. His life lessons don't seem to be coming from a Christian worldview, but we can learn something from them nonetheless. He said three things which I found particularly interesting.

1) It's not what you did in life but what you didn't do, that you will regret at the end of your life.
2) You need to find your passion. It won't be in things or money, but in people and your relationships with them.
3) I waited until I was 39 to get married, because it took me that long to find someone where her happiness was more important than mine.

It was his third point that really hit me: to put your spouse's interests ahead of your own. I hope I can be that unselfish some day. Most days I'm still a pretty selfish person. It's something I need to work on, with God's help.

So I'm wondering, if you had to share your life lessons with a captive audience, what would you say? It gives you something to think about.

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