BEING A DAD: AN EXAMPLE OF A DAD (RANDY PAUSCH VIDEO)

Before starting with the rather practical posts of the "course" of Being a Dad, I wanted to show an example of a dad who moved me to see him.

Randy Pausch, an engineer and professor, 47, discovered last year that he had pancreatic cancer with a prognosis of life of between three and six months of life.

In the US it is common, in the Universities, to do what are called the "Last Lectures"(last lesson), something like a lecture by a teacher in which he explains what he thinks he should count before he dies. Something like a concrete and concise summary of the most important knowledge.

In the case of Randy, he made his last lecture at the University but dedicated it, rather than to show his technical knowledge, to teach something much more valuable: how to live life. The conference was titled "How to truly fulfill your childhood dreams". The video you can see is a summary of that conference he made for TV in the Oprah Winfrey program. I saw it two months ago and I really liked it.

Randy explains his childhood, how his parents gave him the freedom to let him be a child, letting him decorate his room and supporting him in his dreams and gives some brushstrokes of what he considers important in life.

I love the moment he explains that when he bought his first car, a convertible, and took his nephews over the weekend, he literally threw a can of soda (coke?) In the seats for the children to see that "It's just a material thing". In this way, when one of them threw up in the car when he returned from the weekend, he got the child did not feel guilty for having stained his uncle's car "for having become ill".

I don't explain anymore because everything is in the video. Simply, it seems to me a perfect example of a father (and person) that we should all consider, something that I think I could sum up with the phrase: Let us love people and use things (let alone love things and use people).