Lesson in Life From a Dying Man

Years ago, as a massage therapist, I learned something from a client. She is a successful woman, mother, and grandmother. One of the things she believed, and taught her kids was, “If you can solve it with money, it’s not really a problem.”  Read that again. “If you can solve it with money, it’s not really a problem.”

Interesting take on things isn’t it. I’ve shared this thinking with lots of people over the years; students, clients, associates, family, and friends. The question I posed was, “given the choice, would you rather be healthy and broke or have $25 million in the bank and be stage-4 pancreatic cancer?”

I think that kind of take-it-out-to-the-limit question really boils it down. I’ll chose healthy and broke, thank you very much.

Posed as a philosophical discussion, nearly everyone agrees, given those two choices; they’d rather be broke and healthy. I say nearly, because I have met a couple people who hesitated on the decision.

Philosophical discussions like this are enlightening and fun. Sometimes they can even shift a person’s thinking onto what is really important to them. Sadly and all too often, after the elation of mental gymnastics wears off; this same person is prone to complaining about their finances or feeling overwhelmed by their bank balance.

What happened to the euphoria of the philosophical? What happened to the enlightenment that demonstrated to them that it is true “when you have your health you have everything”?

By the way, the couple people who hesitated on the answer were young – high school and college students… ah, the bliss of naïveté.

Philosophical discussion vs. real life; there seems to be quite a schism between the two.

I suppose, as we get older and we realize we can’t do all the things we used to do as kids; we focus more and more on the importance of our health. And as we watch friends and family die seemingly too early deaths; the understanding that money is transient, health is vital, and life is often too short becomes more and more ingrained in our consciousness.

Sometimes it is sad. And sometimes these lessons can be inspiring and magnificent – causing us to stop for a moment and think about what really is important. We can think that we really do have a choice in things - not a choice as to whether or not we will die; but a choice as to how we will live. Regardless of how much or how little money we have.

If you’ve come this far I will assume that you’ll click on the link below. What you will watch will move you. I’m certain that scenarios like this play out thousands of times across our great land. This one just happened to be captured and preserved - not so much for us, the public, but for other reasons that you will soon discover. And the magic of the internet makes it possible to spread this message to untold millions like me and you.

Every once in a while in the midst of junk emails, useless spam, silly photos, and moronic chain-letteresque “forward this to everyone you know so some child in (fill in your third-world nation of choice) can have a kidney replaced because one was stolen from her in the middle of the night…” emails, comes a real gem.

Something inspiring.

Something that will stop and make you think.

Something that, perhaps, will change your day… or maybe your life.

This, I believe, is one of those videos.

It’s only about eleven minutes long. Do yourself a favor and click on the link below or copy and paste the link into your browser:

http://video.stumbleupon.com/?s=ithct48cqw&i=ufcchmyxqsuj9vwsemax

I am not going to add anything to this other than to suggest the lessons in this lecture can easily be carried forward to your work, your family, your friends, your life.

To learn more; visit the Randy Pausch website.

If you are inspired by this speech, pass it on.

George Gillas

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Editor’s note: For more information about the Randy Pausch famous lecture, please visit the Carnegie Mellon University website. There you will find additional links to many other videos of Randy’s lecture and may also download a transcript of Randy’s lecture, presented in September 2007. For your convenience, the link is provided below:
Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture