Time to put those childhood dreams on a sticky note?

On Friday, 25th of July 2008, Prof. Randy Pausch became immortal. He suffered from incurable pancreatic cancer, of which I have no idea. I hadn't heard his name till 2 weeks back. According to Wikipedia - "Each year about 37,680 individuals in the United States are diagnosed with this condition, and 34,290 die from the disease." So, he was one of these 34K people. What did make a difference was his invincible spirit against the terminal disease. Thanks to few friends that I saw his 'Last Lecture'. I am having a tough time trying to classify his talk because it was 'simply' a 'heart-to-heart' talk. Though his experiences are a big source of inspiration, he did not try to 'preach'. He talked and because it came from a guy who was not 'pretending' that it was his last lecture, it made a deep impact on people world wide. No doubt, the lecture was delivered perfectly, had a crisp matter but it wasn't a corporate stunt that people were witnessing. It was seeing a man talking about real life things that matter to everyone.

I would be a millionth person to write/talk about the CMU Prof. This is to just add a place on web where the astray reader might get to know about him. No, he is not great or he is not trying to preach anything. See it if you want to know do you really enjoy your life. See it if you have been a student. See it if you love academia. See it if you believe in being happy. See it if you believe in learning. See it if you believe in dreams. He knew his last day (figuratively) and how much time he had. We don't. So, isn't it all the more urgent for us? Billions exist, only a fraction live.