Wow, thank you very much for the generous comment. The thoughts on the blog post were solely of my younger brother Ali, I just scripted it out.

Randy Pausch’s last lecture is really doing rounds on the internet, isn’t it. I watched half, before I had to get back to work from my coffee break, looking forward to complete the rest soon. I’m certainly all for achieving childhood dreams however one should not be mesermised by them completely to be blinded to Adulthood dreams. Sure as a child one may dream to be an Astronaut, a Rock Star and subsequently he may go all out and bag that fantasy, but there still remains unanswered that ultimate one nagging question which is, so what? You have done something that you have always wanted to do, how exactly has that helped to make the world a better place? How has that fed the stomachs of hundreds of hungry children? Is that what’s one’s ultimate purpose of existence is? There has to be more to life than fulfilling childhood fantasies.

Don’t get me wrong Dmitry. I’ve got nothing against childhood dreams, as long as it’s looked with the right perspective. Childhood dreams are great, but sometimes there are issues that are of higher priority and our boyhood dreams should not obscure those off.

However, the crux of the matter is still the same. We are so caught up in our day to day routines, so that we can continue to sustain our lavish lifestyles that be it childhood dreams or saving the world from economic crises/poverty/global warming, we just dont’ have time to lookup from our laptops to do something about them. I totally agree that speeches like Randy Pausch’s grab hold of our guts and give them a vigorous shake to remind us what’s really important.

You’ve may have read Tuesdays with Morrie had a look the speeches of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates at their respective universities. However, if not, all of the below are worth going through and are above the lines of this post and comment.:
Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man and Life’s Greatest Lesson
Speech that Steve Jobs gave at Stanford
Speech that Bill Gates delivered at Harvard

Warm wishes,
Arif
Ps. by the way liked your blog :-). Added your feed to my reader.

Thank you so much for your comment. Aap ko bhi bohat bohat Ramadhan Mubarak!

About a few weeks ago I watched Randy Pausch’s “The Last Lecture” he gave before he passed away – see my post here:

http://dimasayswow.blogspot.com/2008/08/live-life-like-its_15.html

and it reminded me so much about how our “fulfillment of childhood dreams” should never stop! I think about this – but I always forget and get caught up in day to day life. You know – all the people who read this, at first you think a lot about this, and then you have many things to do and you start to forget…

Here is to not forgetting to live like you have 6 months left! Aweeesome post!

Shoot me an email – would love to connect!

-Dmitry

Dan – Thanks for the comment. So True. We often think and plan as if we’re gonna live forever. When Death is such a stark reality, I wonder why is it so?

Without remembering that your time in this life is limited, I believe that there would be a tendency to procrastinate, to act as if you had all the time in the world to achieve your goals.

An understanding of one’s own mortality can focus one on what is truly important.

Very thought provoking post. Agree with every word of it. Sachmuch, there would be so many things we won’t do, and so many things we would, were such a possibility realize itself.

For example, we ‘ll stop worrying about most of (if not 100%) the things we do, not getting enough promotions at job, not getting enough admiration from boss at job (wrt other colleagues), not getting good enough school for our kid (wrt neighbor’s kid), not owning good enough flat (wrt our ex colleague, batch mates) etc etc.
And many things we take for granted, mainly the love / care / affection of our family and close friends, we won’t.
And finally, we ‘d stop cribbing to God that IT has not given us this favor, that favor, cause we would realize HE has given us infinite things to be thankful for … foremost among them: “having just six months (or less) to live” hasn’t still come from a doc.
Perhaps life can be lived a lot better if we live it as if we had only few more months / weeks to live.
Also, read the following long back somewhere over the net, and was reminded of it after reading your post:
I asked God, “What surprises you most about mankind?”
God answered: “That they lose their health to make money and then lose their money to restore their health. That by thinking anxiously about the future, they forget the present, such that they live neither for the present nor the future. That they live as if they will never die,and they die as if they had never lived…”