The link came a while back from my friend Doak:  To the video of this last lecture, taken from an Oprah Winfrey show.  The lecturer, Randy Pausch, inspired completely, and now this experience is expounded upon in the new book The Last Lecture.  I had not known of this custom among orators to perform such a lecture, but learning of it let me appreciate the group more.  What a hold the video has taken, millions of views.

One of my favorite performing songwriters, John Gorka, has a line in a song–”get your compass and your sharpest knife, because people love you when they know you’re leaving soon”, and the situation reminds me of this line, the truth of it.  Pausch admits that the dying has so much to do with the attention.  The self-help literature talks about how you’d like to end up, what would people say at your funeral.  This lecture relates to that, though somewhat in a reversal of roles.  People love you also, or they have to reiterate it, when they know they’re leaving soon.  Mortality is such a core part of our world.  I feel more alive seeing, hearing and reading this brave set of words.