Title: The Last Lecture
Author: Randy Pausch
Publisher: Hyperion, 2008; 206 pp. $21.95 (paperback and digital versions also available)
Recommendation (4-star scale): 
Imagine you are leaving your job for a new one in another state. You have been with this organization for many years and have mentored many diverse people in the process. What do you tell your employees and co-workers as you prepare to leave?
You haven’t been feeling well and you go to the doctor and after a series of tests over a number of months you are told that you have a terminal illness — the only thing left is to receive palliative care. You have months left at the most. What will you say to your friends and family? How will you prepare them? What life lessons do you want to leave with them?
This was the circumstance facing Randy Pausch.
At the age of 47, the father of three young children, a successful and tenured professor at a prestigious university, he was told after receiving multiple kinds of treatment and a radical surgery that his pancreatic cancer was still spreading and there was no medically known treatment to defeat the cancer; it was only a matter of time until he would die, not whether he would die from this cancer.
At the same, Carnegie Mellon University, where he was a professor had asked him to participate in a lecture series entitled “Journeys,” in which various professors are asked to reflect on the pathways of their personal and professional lives and offer some direction to their students. The timing of his diagnosis and this lecture coincided so that he was one month into a prognosis of 3-6 months of good health remaining.
The lecture hall was packed and through the technology of YouTube, the lecture became amazingly popular to a much broader audience as well (over 11 million views, as of this morning). And for a few months, he remained stronger than anticipated and a book deal followed so that only about six months after his lecture, this book was published. And only a few months later he passed away, eleven months after his diagnosis of 3-6 months.
The goal of the book is to put on paper life lessons and perspectives so that his children will be able to “hear” their father speak to them as they grow and mature. It is a worthy idea and one that is well-written, entertaining, encouraging, and uplifting.
Pausch was obviously bright and articulate, fun and engaging. The book is a good read — it moves quickly, interspersing principles with anecdotes. For a man who knows that he is dying, the book is far from morose.
I don’t know how not to have fun. I’m dying and I’m having fun. And I’m going to keep having fun every day I have left. Because there’s no other way to play it.
And the book reads as an affirmation of that creed. He packed as much fun, as many trips, as full and memorable adventures as possible into his final months. And to that end, the book is stimulating and hopeful. It was and is an emotional and positive affirmation of how to extract succulent marrow from the bitter bones of life.
Clichés (he self-admittedly loves clichés) and common sense counsel abound:
- Time must be explicitly managed, like money.
- Rethink the telephone.
- Take a time out.
- Don’t obsess over what people say.
- Watch what they do, not what they say.
- Loyalty is a two-way street.
- Show gratitude.
- A bad apology is worse than no apology.
- No job is beneath you.
- Tell the truth.
- Never give up.
- Be a communitarian.
- Seek the input of others
What makes the book work well is the way he has interspersed stories into those principles. They make sense. They resonate. The reader finds his head nodding in silent agreement — of course…
Yet, the book could have said so much more.
Whenever I read a book like this I am torn. It is counsel that on one hand is wise — it is good to keep living while you are alive and to extract as much joy and offer as much wisdom and encouragement to others as possible. And at the same time it is deficient. There is more than living 47 years well and extracting a few happy memories from those years. There is better counsel to receive from a pastor than to pay the “emotional insurance premiums” to family members by making video tapes and telling stories (which is what Randy’s pastor told him). There is a joy and a memory that is more profound than petting a dolphin or going to Disneyland or reading a letter from a parent after that parent has died.
There is an eternity to prepare to meet.
I had no expectation that this book would address the topic of eternity and faith and Christ with any kind of Biblical perspective. And it didn’t. And that is the great sadness of the story. It was counsel that ended up short of the mark. It was like the souffle that fell, the fly ball caught just short of the wall, the love letter that was never received.
As John Calvin wrote,
Nobody has made any progress in the school of Christ unless he cheerfully looks forward to the day of his death and to the day of the final resurrection. [Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life.]
To that end, if you really want a story that will encourage you to think about death in Biblical terms, watch and read the testimony of Rachel Barkey. No, she’s not as well known as Randy Pausch was, she doesn’t write or speak with as much creativity, but there is a hope and confidence in her message that is eternal.
So read Pausch’s book if you need an emotional encouragement — it will be a pleasurable experience. Just don’t expect to receive eternal counsel.
Words of Grace 