Wednesday, October 10, 2007

How To Live Your Life


Have you heard about the "last lecture" of Randy Pausch? He's a virtual reality professor who is dying of pancreatic cancer at the age of 46. You can check it out here CBS.

He talks about his dreams and lessons learned. How to live your life with honesty and earnestness and enabling others to fulfill their dreams.

I think I was meant to listen to him tonight. I've been moaning about a lot of things lately, having a very dark and negative attitude. He really made me stop and think.

Funnily enough one of the things I've been moaning about is having to paint my youngest daughter's room after the messy chore of my oldest's on the weekend. And she wants different coloured circles on the wall with bright bold colours. Randy showed a picture of the room he painted as a kid and this is what he said:

"If you lead your life the right way, the Karma will take care of itself, the dreams will come to you. And anybody who is out there who's a parent - if your kids want to paint the bedroom - as a favor to me, let them do it. It will be OK. Don't worry about the resale value of the house."

I think I'll let my youngest have her circles. I might even let her paint them herself.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

How sad for him and his family. My mom died just after she turned 47, also way too soon. I really feel for his family, but it sounds like he's leaving them with a wonderful legacy of his love.

Good for you! Walls (circles) can be painted over. Allowing your daughter to have her room is more important in the long run. And who knows? You may decide you enjoy painting after all. :-)

Julia Phillips Smith said...

I do think you were meant to bump into that, Anne! Yes, paint is do-over-able. She'll be stimulated by designs that intrigue her.

Unknown said...

I saw that speech and bawled. It really struck me how important it is not to get beaten down by the little things.

And yes, let her paint her room. There is always primer.

Kelly Boyce said...

Wise choice. Painted walls are fixable and changeable and it doesn't hurt anyone to have them one color or another. I say save the stress for the big deals and let the other stuff take care of itself.