The Last Lecture | 誠品線上

最後的演講

內容簡介

內容簡介 改變數百萬人看待這個世界的態度！如果這是最後一次機會，我們會留下什麼給這個世界？ Randy Pausch 是卡內基美隆大學 (Carnegie Mellon University) 的教授，也是Entertainment Technology Center (ETC)的創始人之一，主持 Alice 計畫，目標是讓年輕的一代能「無痛學習」程式語言。幽默風趣、廣受學生愛戴、擁有美好家庭，但是他在2006年夏季發現罹患了致死率最高，五年存活率僅有4%的胰臟癌。在全力配合治療之後，卻仍然在2007年8月發現癌細胞移轉到其它部位。此時 Randy Pausch 教授除了決定在剩下的時間好好和家人共度之外，也安排了他的最後一堂課 (The Last Lecture) 的講座。 這堂課並沒有悲傷和不捨，而是充滿笑聲和歡樂，如同 Randy Pausch 教授一直以來的人生態度，他想告訴聽眾，什麼才是最重要的。他不談他的病、也不談他的家庭、不談精神靈性和宗教，這堂講座的主題是「真正實現你的童生夢想 Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams」。他談論他的童年夢想、如何實現自己的夢想及幫助他人的夢想。講座中，他分享了他的兒時夢想和這一生所學到的經驗。 體驗無重力狀態、贏得超大型的絨毛玩偶、當NFL球員、當星際奇航Star Trek裡的庫克船長(Captain Kirk)、寫一篇世界百科全書(World Book)的內容、加入迪士尼工作作一名創意工程師…，這些兒時夢想天馬行空，但是他盡了全力去追求，而且大部份都實現了！而且就算沒有實現的（當NFL球員)，他也在追求夢想的過程中收穫滿滿。 在追求夢想的過程中一定會遭遇到困難，Randy Pausch 教授也一樣多次收到拒絕信，甚至作為一些事的開創者，失敗的時候就會成為眾矢之的。但是他說：「牆的存在，是讓我們有機會展現自己有多想達到目標，是為了阻擋那些不夠渴望的人。」牆讓我們知道值得為它後面的寶藏而努力不懈，這些「撞牆」的經驗都是為了讓自己努力去追求夢想。 除此之外，在他自己教導學生、與學生及其它專家合作的經驗中，他瞭解「幫助別人完成夢想，遠比自己完成夢想還要有趣」。現在他是虛擬實境 (Virtual Reality) 領域最有貢獻的研究學者之一，他共同主持的 Alice 計畫可以讓更多人無痛學習程式語言，已經幫助上百萬的學習者，所以即使他知道自己來日無多，但他說「他一定會在 ALICE 中繼續活著」。 有些事，如同他的病，「我們無法改變它，只能決定我們要如何回應，就像我們不能改變手上牌的，但可以決定如何出牌。」Randy Pausch 教授在完成這最後一堂課之後，仍然繼續和癌症奮鬥著，並且和家人一起用最快樂的方式度過剩下的時間。 他的最後一堂課透過網路的傳播，在全球各地都引起了廣大的迴響，在青年學子之間不斷互相傳閱，甚至登上 Youtube 的最受歡迎影片。最後出版社邀約 Randy Pausch 教授將講座內容集結成書出版，讓更多人可以看到；他欣然接受，但為了不影響他和家人相處的最後時間，他利用每天一小時騎腳踏車運動的時間接受訪問和整理，而完成本書。 Randy Pausch 教授以他最後的生命時間為我們上了這樣一堂課，永遠懷抱夢想，並且全力追求。

作者介紹

作者介紹 ■作者簡介蘭迪‧鮑許（Randy Pausch）卡內基美隆大學教授，教導科目包括資訊科學、人機互動以及設計，他在一九八八至一九九七年間曾於維吉尼亞大學任教。他在教學與研究方面都曾獲得獎項肯定，曾與爾都比（Adobe）、谷歌、藝電，以及華德迪士尼夢想工程公司合作，也是愛麗絲計畫的創始人。目前和太太及三名子女住在維吉尼亞州。傑弗利‧札斯洛（Jeffrey Zaslow）《華爾街日報》專欄作家。他出席了鮑許那場最後的演講，事後撰寫的報導引起了世界各地對這場演講的熱烈迴響。他住在底特律市郊，家中成員除了太太雪莉之外，還有三名女兒，蕎丹、愛麗克絲及依甸。

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內文 :

A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Maybe you've seen one.

It has become a common exercise on college campuses. Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

For years, Carnegie Mellon had a "Last Lecture Series." But by the time organizers got around to asking me to do it, they'd renamed their series "Journeys," asking selected professors "to offer reflections on their personal and professional journeys." There wasn't a lot of life in that description, but I agreed to go with it. I was given the September slot.

At the time, I already had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, but I was optimistic. Maybe I'd be among the lucky ones who'd survive.

While I went through treatment, those running the lecture series kept sending me emails. "What will you be talking about?" they asked. "Please provide an abstract." There's a formality in academia that can't be ignored, even if a man is busy with other things, like trying not to die. By mid-August, I was told that a poster for the lecture had to be printed, so I'd have to decide on a topic.

That very week, however, I got the news: My most recent treatment hadn't worked; I had just months to live.

I knew I could cancel the lecture. Everyone would understand. Suddenly, there were so many other things to be done. I had to deal with my own grief, and the sadness of those who loved me. I had to throw myself into getting my family's affairs in order. And yet, despite everything, I couldn't shake the idea of giving the talk. I was energized by the idea of delivering a last lecture that really was a last lecture. What could I say? How would it be received? Could I even get through it?

"They'll let me back out," I told my wife, Jai, "but I really want to do it."

Jai had always been my cheerleader - when I was enthusiastic, so was she - but she was leery of this whole last-lecture idea. We had just moved from Pittsburgh to Southeastern Virginia so that after my death, Jai and the kids could be near her brother and sister-in-law. Jai felt that I ought to be spending my precious time with our kids, or unpacking our new house, rather than devoting my hours to writing the lecture and then traveling back to Pittsburgh to deliver it. "Call me selfish," Jai told me. "But I want all of you. Any time you'll spend working on this lecture is wasted time, because it's time away from the kids and from me."

I understood where she was coming from. From the time I'd gotten sick, I had made a pledge to myself to defer to Jai and honor her wishes. I saw it as my mission to do all I could to lessen the burdens in her life brought on by my illness. That's why I spent many of my waking hours making arrangements for my family's future without me. Still, I couldn't let go of my urge to give this last lecture. Throughout my academic career, I'd given some pretty good talks. But being considered the best speaker in a computer-science department is like being known as the tallest of the Seven Dwarfs. And right then, I had the feeling that I had more in me, that if I gave it my all, I might be able to offer people something special. "Wisdom" is a strong word, but maybe that was it.

Jai still wasn't happy about it. We eventually took the issue to Michele Reiss, the psychotherapist we'd begun seeing a few months earlier. She specializes in helping families when one member is confronting a terminal illness.

"I know Randy," Jai told Dr. Reiss. "He's a workaholic. I know just what he'll be like when he starts putting the lecture together. It'll be all-consuming." The lecture, she argued, would be an unnecessary diversion from the overwhelming issues we were grappling with, in our lives.

Another matter upsetting Jai: To give the talk as scheduled, I would have to fly to Pittsburgh the day before, which was Jai's 41st birthday. "This is my last birthday we'll celebrate together," she told me. "You're actually going to leave me on my birthday?" Certainly, the thought of leaving Jai that day was painful to me. And yet, I couldn't let go of the idea of the lecture. I had come to see it as the last moment of my career, as a way to say goodbye to my "work family." I also found myself fantasizing about giving a last lecture that would be the oratorical equivalent of a retiring baseball slugger driving one last ball into the upper deck. I had always liked the final scene in "The Natural," when the aging, bleeding ballplayer Roy Hobbs miraculously hits that towering home run.

Dr. Reiss listened to Jai and to me. In Jai, she said, she saw a strong, loving woman who had intended to spend decades building a full life with a husband, raising children to adulthood. Now our lives together had to be squeezed into a few months. In me, Dr. Reiss saw a man not yet ready to fully retreat to his home life, and certainly not yet ready to climb into his deathbed. "This lecture will be the last time many people I care about will see me in the flesh," I told her flatly. "I have a chance here to really think about what matters most to me, to cement how people will remember me, and to do whatever good I can on the way out."

More than once, Dr. Reiss had watched Jai and me sit together on her office couch, holding tightly to each other, both of us in tears. She told us she could see the great respect between us, and she was often viscerally moved by our commitment to getting our final time together right. But she said it wasn't her role to weigh in on whether or not I gave the lecture. "You'll have to decide that on your own," she said, and encouraged us to really listen to each other, so we could make the right decision for both of us.

Given Jai's reticence, I knew I had to look honestly at my motivations. Why was this talk so important to me? Was it a way to remind me and everyone else that I was still very much alive? To prove I still had the fortitude to perform? Was it a limelight-lover's urge to show off one last time? The answer was yes on all fronts. "An injured lion wants to know if he can still roar," I told Jai. "It's about dignity and self-esteem, which isn't quite the same as vanity." There was something else at work here, too. I had started to view the talk as a vehicle for me to ride into the future I would never see. I reminded Jai of the kids' ages: 5, 2 and 1. "Look," I said. "At five, I suppose that Dylan will grow up to have a few memories of me. But how much will he really remember? What do you and I even remember from when we were five? Will Dylan remember how I played with him, or what he and I laughed about? It will be hazy at best.

"And how about Logan and Chloe? They may have no memories at all. Nothing. Especially Chloe. And I can tell you this: When the kids are maybe twelve or thirteen, they're going to go through this phase where they absolutely, achingly need to know: 'Who was my dad? What was he like?' This lecture could help give them an answer to that." I told Jai I'd make sure Carnegie Mellon would record the lecture. "I'll get you a DVD. When the kids are older, you can show it to them. It'll help them understand who I was and what I cared about."

Jai heard me out, then asked the obvious question. "If you have things you want to say to the kids, or advice you want to give them, why not just put a video camera on a tripod and tape it here in the living room?"

Maybe she had me there. Or maybe not. Like that lion in the jungle, my natural habitat was still on a college campus, in front of students. "One thing I've learned," I told Jai, "is that when parents tell children things, it doesn't hurt to get some external validation. If I can get an audience to laugh and clap at the right time, maybe that would add gravitas to what I'm telling the kids."

Jai smiled at me, her dying showman, and finally relented. She knew I'd been yearning to find ways to leave a legacy for the kids. Okay. Perhaps this lecture could be an avenue for that. And so, with Jai's green light, I had a challenge before me. How could I turn this academic talk into something that would resonate with our kids a decade or more up the road?

I knew for sure that I didn't want the lecture to focus on my cancer. My medical saga was what it was, and I'd already been over it and over it. I had little interest in giving a discourse on, say, my insights into how I coped with the disease, or how it gave me new perspectives. Many people might expect the talk to be about dying. But it had to be about living.

* * * "What makes me unique?" That was the question I felt compelled to address. Maybe answering that would help me figure out what to say. I was sitting with Jai in a doctor's waiting room at Johns Hopkins, awaiting yet another pathology report, and I was bouncing my thoughts off her.

"Cancer doesn't make me unique," I said. There was no arguing that. More than 37,000 Americans a year are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer alone.

I thought hard about how I defined myself: as a teacher, a computer scientist, a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a mentor to my students. Those were all roles I valued. But did any of those roles really set me apart?

Though I've always had a healthy sense of self, I knew this lecture needed more than just bravado. I asked myself: "What do I, alone, truly have to offer?"

And then, there in that waiting room, I suddenly knew exactly what it was. It came to me in a flash: Whatever my accomplishments, all of the things I loved in life, were rooted in the dreams and goals I had as a child... and in the ways I had managed to fulfill almost all of them. My uniqueness, I realized, came in the specifics of all the dreams - from incredibly meaningful to decidedly quirky -- that defined my 46 years of life. Sitting there, I know that despite the cancer, I truly believed I was a lucky man because I had lived out these dreams. And I had lived out my dreams, in great measure, because of things I was taught by all sorts of extraordinary people along the way. If I was able to tell my story with the passion I felt, I thought, my lecture might help others find a path to fulfilling their own dreams.

I had my laptop with me in that waiting room, and fueled by this epiphany, I quickly tapped out an email to the lecture organizers. I told them I finally had a title for them. "My apologies for the delay," I wrote. "Let's call it: 'Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.'"