Randy Pausch's last lecture and obsession with death
Today was seriously reading something at office when the outlook new email alert flashed with a subject line announcing "A Beautiful Lecture"...I was like..hmm ok, lets see whats this all about..so opened the email. It had nothing but said "Good Morning" and had a link..so with nothing else to do I clicked on the link. When the page loaded I was ..NO, PLEASE, NOT AGAIN...yeah you guessed it right, it was link to Randy Pausch's last lecture.
I really loved the lecture when I first saw it at a friend's blog, but was not prepared for "forward" hysteria I have seen associated with this video. I really started to wonder, Randy's speech, thought very inspiration , is not the first of its kind or the only of its kind. I am sure You Tube is filled with such videos, so why such a reaction to this video? Why are we so obsessed with death?
Its not with just Randy, but you will find umpteen examples, from Buddha to now Randy, where in you will find that when you focus on topic of death, it propels you into self awareness, morality, life etc. Why is this so?
In the movie "Bucket list", Cole and Carter have the best time of their lives only after being diagnosed with terminal Cancer. So why does knowing the fact that you will die soon triggers "developments" that probably wouldn't have been seen other wise?
Through death, you dissolve in to the global "Carbon pool" and there are good chances of you being picked up and casted in to say a ring in bark of a spruce tree, which allows you to live much much longer than being part of fragile human body, so going by this logic, why don't we feel good about death and why are we so afraid of it or feel so weak about it?
I really loved the lecture when I first saw it at a friend's blog, but was not prepared for "forward" hysteria I have seen associated with this video. I really started to wonder, Randy's speech, thought very inspiration , is not the first of its kind or the only of its kind. I am sure You Tube is filled with such videos, so why such a reaction to this video? Why are we so obsessed with death?
Its not with just Randy, but you will find umpteen examples, from Buddha to now Randy, where in you will find that when you focus on topic of death, it propels you into self awareness, morality, life etc. Why is this so?
In the movie "Bucket list", Cole and Carter have the best time of their lives only after being diagnosed with terminal Cancer. So why does knowing the fact that you will die soon triggers "developments" that probably wouldn't have been seen other wise?
Through death, you dissolve in to the global "Carbon pool" and there are good chances of you being picked up and casted in to say a ring in bark of a spruce tree, which allows you to live much much longer than being part of fragile human body, so going by this logic, why don't we feel good about death and why are we so afraid of it or feel so weak about it?
Labels: death, Randy Pausch
2 Comments:
How inspiring Randy Pausch is! If you liked "The Last Lecture", another fantastic memoir I just read and highly recommend is "My Stroke of Insight" by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. Her TEDTalk video (ted.com) has been seen as many times as The Last Lecture I think, and Oprah did 4 shows on her book, so there are a lot of similarities. In My Stroke of Insight, there's a happy ending though. It's an incredible story! I hear they're making it into a movie.
By
Anonymous, at 1:52 PM
Wow....what a way of putting it....i guess our obsession with death stems from the fact that we are really not very happy about turning to insects, trees or grass...for one, i'd like to hold on to myself for dear life, instead of turning into one of the annual rings in the cork cambium of a tree!!!!!
:) nice writing....
By
Anupama., at 3:23 PM
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