那天在 Oprah 的秀看到你的演講. 因為是中途才開電視的. 所以你的演講我只聽到後半段. 雖然只是後半段而已. 但是我已經學到很多了. 你說人在工作及學習當中不要抱怨. 因為抱怨對工作來講並不會有幫助. 你又說世界上沒有一定的惡人. 如果某人真的讓你無法忍受的話. 多給他一些時間, 你一定會發現他還是有他的好處的. 我一邊聽一邊深深的點頭. 並且心裡想著將來一定要讓小傢伙也懂得這個道理. 鏡頭照到 Oprah. 她聽的非常的專心. 你接著又說, 也許不是每個人都同意你的說法. 不過你並不介意. 因為這一篇最後的演講你只說給三個人聽的. 接下來的鏡頭就是你和你三個可愛稚齡的孩子的照片. 我心裡還在深深的同意你. 這是你人生的價值觀. 你當然有權利這麼的教育你的孩子啊! 鏡頭又轉到其他的觀眾. 有些人已經泣不成聲了. Oprah 接著說’這是Randy Pausch 教授的最後一篇的演講. Randy Pausch 是一位大學教授. 擁有一個美滿的家庭包括三的稚齡的孩子. Randy 罹患胰臟癌並且只剩三個月的生命. 接下來他要和我們聊一聊他的病情. 我們馬上就回來.’
我並不認識你. 但是為什麼會是你? 為什麼? 你的家庭是一個典型的美滿家庭. 這種事為什麼會發生在你身上? 看完 Oprah 的秀之後我久久一直無法釋懷. 我想到很久以前我的一個同事. 當時他正在唸社區大學. 那年的暑假他計畫要轉入德州大學. 年輕又帥氣的他有著非常好的脾氣. 頂著一頭燦爛的金髮讓大家都喜歡他. 他工作起來精明幹練的樣子很明顯的是將來大有前途. 美國人所謂的 All American 他就是最好的典範. 卻不知在突如其來的一場車禍中當場喪命. 隔天我聽到這個消息一直無法接受這個事實.
聖經舊約中約伯的故事我一直都不太了解. 約伯一直都是一個好人. 正直良善的他也擁有一個美滿的家庭. 上帝為了試探他的信仰奪去了他的一切. 約伯在苦難當中仍然沒有離開上帝. 最後約伯又得回了他的一切.
我想我不了解的是... 約伯受了這些苦. 對他來講他得到了什麼? 他不是一直都是一個好人嗎? 這個世界上為什麼有這麼多我不了解的事? 人為什麼要受苦? 尤其是那些良善的人. 我真的不懂!
那天聽完你的演講以後. 我渾渾噩噩的無法理清我的思緒. 後來洗澡時我一邊洗頭一邊洗我的臉. 眼睛揉一揉淚水就不知不覺的順著蓮蓬頭的水一起流下. 在那一剎那中我忽然懂了. 因為每個人來到這個世上都有不同的使命. 有些時候上帝是藉由你的故事來教育其他的人. 因為你的遭遇所以讓我們這些平凡人會更珍惜我們所擁有的. 原來我一直是一個這麼自私的人. 我什麼事情都是以自己為主. 想到這裡冷不防的打了個冷顫. 心裡覺得真是慚愧. It’s not all about you! 這麼簡單的道理我到現在才真正的了解.
從那天開始我就一直在為你禱告. 像你所說的, 我也希望奇蹟會出現. 你自嘲的說你現在是美國最有名的即將死亡的人. 如果你的病忽然得救了. 那不是很尷尬嗎? 你接著又說你不介意尷尬. 你希望你可以得到那個尷尬. 因為你真的希望你能夠看到你的孩子長大成人. 我可以了解你的感覺. 因為我的孩子也很小.
我還在為你禱告. 我想全美國或是全世界也有很多人在為你禱告. 我們都希望奇蹟會出現. 如果沒有的話, 當你再回到上帝的面前時. 你將會是祂最喜愛的兒子.
PS. 有沒有人可以告訴我哪裡可以追蹤到 Randy Pausch 的近況呢?
以下是摘自 Oprah 的網站
Randy Pausch is a married father of three, a very popular professor at Carnegie Mellon University—and he is dying. He is suffering from pancreatic cancer, which he says has returned after surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. Doctors say he has only a few months to live.
In September 2007, Randy gave a final lecture to his students at Carnegie Mellon that has since been downloaded more than a million times on the Internet. ”There’s an academic tradition called the ’Last Lecture.’ Hypothetically, if you knew you were going to die and you had one last lecture, what would you say to your students?” Randy says. ”Well, for me, there’s an elephant in the room. And the elephant in the room, for me, it wasn’t hypothetical.”
Despite the lecture’s wide popularity, Randy says he really only intended his words for his three small children. ”I think it’s great that so many people have benefited from this lecture, but the truth of the matter is that I didn’t really even give it to the 400 people at Carnegie Mellon who came. I only wrote this lecture for three people, and when they’re older, they’ll watch it,” he says.
Randy says his speech is mostly about achieving childhood dreams—and living your life. ”Any professor will tell you there’s some lectures you have to pull them out of yourself, and there’s some that just pour. This talk wrote itself,” he says.
While Randy has known about his cancer for a year, he says he learned six or seven weeks ago that he might only have months to live. ”One person says three to six months, and another one says, ’Yeah, three to six months, but only because three’s in that range.’ So you sort of get some shading of it,” he says.
Randy isn’t giving in to the prognosis—he is continuing his medical treatment in the hope of prolonging his life. ”[Somebody said], ’You’ve become so famous for dying, what’s going to happen if you’re alive in a year or two?’” Randy says. ”I said, ’Give me the problem! I’d like to work on that one.’”
Dr. Oz says it’s impossible to determine precisely how long someone with a terminal illness will survive. ”We also have the phenomenon of a ’no-cebo effect,’” Dr. Oz says. ”Everyone knows what a placebo is, right? When people tell you stuff is going to be good and you do better than you’re supposed to. When we tell you you’re going to die, you cooperate.”
While they obviously want to heal their patients, in many cases, Dr. Oz says the physician’s role is simply to help bring a sense of calm to the family. ”The fascinating thing about the medical profession is the ancient healing rite was not to save lives. We couldn’t do that that well until this century. It wasn’t about doing a lot more than just bringing order to the situation,” he says. ”I unfortunately deal with this a fair amount as a heart surgeon. A lot of times, you’re just making it calm for everybody to break that chaos apart. I do get that we have to offer hope, but hope’s not about having a good outcome. Hope’s about making sense of it all.”
Randy says the first sign that something was wrong with him was a ”funny” feeling. ”I had sort of bloating in my abdomen, and I would have called it cramping, but it wasn’t quite the same,” he says. Randy also became jaundiced without feeling pain—a major indication to doctors that pancreatic cancer could be the culprit.
After an ultrasound, Randy’s doctor told him the news—there was a mass on his pancreas. ”If you’re going to pick off a list, this is not the cancer you would pick,” Randy says. ”I mean, it’s pretty much the last one you would want to get. It’s pretty much the most fatal. I had no idea how bad pancreatic cancer would be.”
Dr. Oz says pancreatic cancer is so serious because by the time it is detected, it is often too late to treat. ”The pancreas is nestled away in the back of the belly, and it doesn’t have any real symptoms until it’s already spread,” he says. ”So unlike a lot of the cancers that we really push hard for folks to get screened on—colon cancer, breast cancer, skin cancer—it’s very hard to find pancreatic cancer early, and by the time we find it, it’s caused that painless jaundice because it’s blocked off the liver.”
Randy says he underwent surgery to remove the tumor, as well as a third of his stomach, a third of his pancreas, his gallbladder and a section of his small intestine. His weight dropped from 183 pounds down to 138, making him so thin that he had to remove his wedding ring. ”I just got so skinny it would fall off. And that hurt,” he says.
Randy says he doesn’t have many regrets about the way he has lived his life, and he sees his cancer just as bad luck. ”I think that we all stand on the dartboard of life. Roughly 30,000 people a year are going to catch a dart labeled pancreatic cancer, and that’s unfortunate. It’s not what I would have chosen. But I in no way feel like I deserved it,” he says.
Randy says he can’t change the cards he’s been dealt, but he can control how he plays them. ”If you are hopeful, if you are optimistic, other people want to help you. And if you are down in the dumps, other people may still help you, but I’ve noticed that they’re walking, not running, over to you,” he says. ”In the lecture, I talk about you’ve got to decide pretty early in life whether you’re going to be a Tigger or an Eeyore. What I found is if you’re an upbeat person, people will flock to help you, and suddenly everything gets easier.”
Randy sees life as being 10 percent white, 10 percent black and 80 percent gray. ”You can go through life and say, ’Gee, that 80 percent gray part, that’s black, and life is a bad thing,’” he says. ”Or you can say that 80 percent gray part’s part of the white, and it’s the goodness and the light. I want to view life that way. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. That 80 percent in the middle really can go either way, and if you decide you want to make it go good, not bad, you have a lot more power to make that happen than you might think.”
As Randy faces his prognosis, thoughts about his final days come to mind. ”I’m not keen on the process [of dying],” he says. ”Not only is this not the cancer you want, it’s probably not the last couple of weeks that you’d want.”
Dr. Oz says pancreatic cancer erodes into the back and invades the nerves, causing a lot of pain, and it blocks off the intestines. ”It’s not pleasant at any level. The things you want to do in life, you can’t do in life. That’s a very reasonable thing to fear,” Dr. Oz says. ”You’re often in chronic pain, and you can’t eat. If you take away the ability to move and to eat, that’s a large part of the human experience.”
Randy emphasizes that medical improvements in pain management may make his last days of the disease easier to bear. ”I’ve certainly heard from lots of people who have given me great encouragement, and they said, ’My dad died of pancreatic cancer and he was visiting with friends until eight hours from the end,’” Randy says. ”So it’s not like every case is going to be this sort of nightmare scenario.”
As his cancer progresses, Randy has made a living will in order to make life a little easier for his family. But aside from planning a small ceremony, Randy says he isn’t spending his days making funeral preparations. ”I don’t think that’s a particularly great use of my time. I think spending just a little bit of time is the right way to do it. I’d rather, while I’m healthy, spend time with my kids and doing things that are helpful to other people while I’m still fairly vigorous.”
While his priorities have not changed drastically, Randy says a lack of time is a major motivator. ”There was a sort of logistical rush, because the analogy I use is that my family’s about to get pushed off a cliff, and any good father says, ’I want to be there to catch them,’” he says. ”Well, I’m not going to be there to catch them. But I’m spending my limited time sewing some really good nets to cushion the fall.”
After hearing advice from counselors, Randy and his wife decided not to tell their young children about the cancer until it’s absolutely necessary. ”Until I become symptomatic, until Daddy looks sick,” he says, ”there’s no sense in telling our children.”
One thing Randy says he has been doing is thinking of ways for his children to know about him and what he thought of them. ”Dylan, my oldest child, he’s just a natural scientist. He’s already figured out that the questions are more important than the answers.
”Logan, he’s my little Tigger. He’s got this joy for life.
”And my little girl, Chloe, well the thing I want to tell her is—you’re not allowed to date until you’re 30! But when you do start dating, my advice on boys is [to] just ignore everything they say and just pay attention to what they do. If you do that, you’re not going to make all the big mistakes.”
While speaking with Randy in Virginia, Dr. Oz says he suggested they take a break and toss around a football. So Randy went and got one—but it was no ordinary ball. The day before, he had worked out with the Pittsburgh Steelers and had the entire team sign a ball…and now he was going to use that prized ball to play catch!
”I said, ’We can’t have a catch with this, it’s signed,’” Dr. Oz says. ”He said, ’What am I going to do with it?’ We ought to all be living our lives like that. What’s the point of saving it? We might as well enjoy it.”
Dr. Oz says pancreatic cancer erodes into the back and invades the nerves, causing a lot of pain, and it blocks off the intestines. ”It’s not pleasant at any level. The things you want to do in life, you can’t do in life. That’s a very reasonable thing to fear,” Dr. Oz says. ”You’re often in chronic pain, and you can’t eat. If you take away the ability to move and to eat, that’s a large part of the human experience.”
Randy emphasizes that medical improvements in pain management may make his last days of the disease easier to bear. ”I’ve certainly heard from lots of people who have given me great encouragement, and they said, ’My dad died of pancreatic cancer and he was visiting with friends until eight hours from the end,’” Randy says. ”So it’s not like every case is going to be this sort of nightmare scenario.”
As his cancer progresses, Randy has made a living will in order to make life a little easier for his family. But aside from planning a small ceremony, Randy says he isn’t spending his days making funeral preparations. ”I don’t think that’s a particularly great use of my time. I think spending just a little bit of time is the right way to do it. I’d rather, while I’m healthy, spend time with my kids and doing things that are helpful to other people while I’m still fairly vigorous.”
While his priorities have not changed drastically, Randy says a lack of time is a major motivator. ”There was a sort of logistical rush, because the analogy I use is that my family’s about to get pushed off a cliff, and any good father says, ’I want to be there to catch them,’” he says. ”Well, I’m not going to be there to catch them. But I’m spending my limited time sewing some really good nets to cushion the fall.”
After hearing advice from counselors, Randy and his wife decided not to tell their young children about the cancer until it’s absolutely necessary. ”Until I become symptomatic, until Daddy looks sick,” he says, ”there’s no sense in telling our children.”
One thing Randy says he has been doing is thinking of ways for his children to know about him and what he thought of them. ”Dylan, my oldest child, he’s just a natural scientist. He’s already figured out that the questions are more important than the answers.
”Logan, he’s my little Tigger. He’s got this joy for life.
”And my little girl, Chloe, well the thing I want to tell her is—you’re not allowed to date until you’re 30! But when you do start dating, my advice on boys is [to] just ignore everything they say and just pay attention to what they do. If you do that, you’re not going to make all the big mistakes.”
While speaking with Randy in Virginia, Dr. Oz says he suggested they take a break and toss around a football. So Randy went and got one—but it was no ordinary ball. The day before, he had worked out with the Pittsburgh Steelers and had the entire team sign a ball…and now he was going to use that prized ball to play catch!
”I said, ’We can’t have a catch with this, it’s signed,’” Dr. Oz says. ”He said, ’What am I going to do with it?’ We ought to all be living our lives like that. What’s the point of saving it? We might as well enjoy it.”
Oprah mentions a quote by Leonardo da Vinci: ”As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.” Does Randy think his life was ”well used”?
”I’m married to an incredible woman, and I have great kids, and it’s hard for me to imagine,” he says. ”I like to think that I have helped a lot of other people—and that’s the best definition I know of time well spent.”
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