Forwarding an Email

"Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you want."

My Mom sent me an email this week. That's nothing new ... I actually get them almost daily which is one of the things I love most about the internet. While she does send me notes, keeping me up on what and how she and my Dad are doing, asking or answering questions, and filling me in on friends and relatives, she also sends me "other stuff" - recipes, funnies, thoughts and beautiful musical picture montages. Some of it I save, some I don't, but I always enjoy.

Every once in awhile my Mom will send me something that touches me especially deeply. Something that reaches in and speaks to my soul in one way or another. Something that hands me a thought or a phrase or an idea that ... from the moment I read it or hear it, I know that it cannot be ignored. When that happens, I usually internalize it - accept it and adopt it within myself. Occasionally I will share it with a friend - one or two special friends that I know will understand how this thought has affected me.

Sometimes, though, there is within me an urge to share the blessing that I have received to as many as I can. Whether it affects others as deeply as it does me is not the point, the point is that it is something that begs to be shared - to hopefully touch other people's lives. Now, I don't do alot of email forwarding. Not sure why, I just don't. However, this begged to be forwarded.

However, that doesn't mean I have to do it the regular way. Just as I can never seem to exactly follow a recipe (I always feel the need to add or take away something), I opted to forward this here, in my special room where I have begun to keep and share my thoughts.

The email contained a video link to a YouTube video. I had determined that I would post it today and so it was on my list of things I wanted to get done this morning during my calm, the girlies are sleeping time. Imagine my surprise and frustration when I get ready to embed the video only to find the link has been pulled from YouTube for licensing reasons! I decided to see if I could work around this, to "scale the brick wall" and started with a search on YouTube that led me to a gold mine of links and information. I have now spent the morning being even more blessed than I was originally.

You see, the original video was a 9.5 minute video from the Oprah Show (hence the lovely yank due to licensing - heaven forbid they allow something marvelous to be shared "for free") and it was a talk by a professor from Carnegie Mellon University - Randy Pausch. If you have seen this, then you know ... you have been blessed. If you have not seen it, I figured out that you can indeed still view it - you simply have to do it with Oprah's blessing by viewing it on her website. I am posting the link to the page on Oprah's website ... you can read the written, but I would suggest you simply scroll to the middle of the page and click on the link entitled "Watch Randy's famous "Last Lecture". It will take a couple of minutes to load and you have to suffer a 20 second commercial but trust me ... it is worth it.

Randy Pausch on Oprah

This is 10 minutes and is incredible. When I originally watched Randy's lecture, I was impressed. What I discovered this morning was even more fun and more impressive. I found the entire true "Last Lecture" given in it's original form. I have also discovered Randy's websites and so I spent the morning, not as I intended but simply enjoying the words of a truly gifted man and an inspirational professor that truly loved what he was doing.

If you'd like to view the lecture in it's entirety, you can find it HERE. The description says it is approx. 1 hour and 45 minutes in length. It's actually about 1 hour and 15 minutes. The first 8 minutes are the introductions from various faculty people and the last 22 minutes are the applause and commendations.

There's also a transcript available for anyone who can't catch everything he's saying ... the mic goes a bit wonky on occasion and you need your volume up for those moments.

It is my hope that by passing this on, someone else can truly be inspired to dream and to follow those dreams.

Childhood dreams really can come true. I know this is fact. I thank Randy for reminding me.