Six Seeds of the Pomegranate

Okay, so I’m a bit late to the party, but really, what else is new, right? Being late to the party is the story of my life. I suffer from a sort of existential tardiness, always behind developmental schedule, wondering where everybody went. I imagine it’s how my brother felt when he had to repeat the 5th grade and all his friends went on to middle school, except it’s my life, there’s no syllabus, and all I can tell is that I’m somewhere behind where I’m supposed to be. Maybe that’s the real reason I can’t embrace open-world racing video games — they fail as escapism.

Anyway, to return to the particular lateness at hand: a few months ago, there was all a lot of web buzz about some “last lecture,” a funny and inspirational talk delivered by a comp sci professor at Carnegie Mellon. Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams was delivered by Professor Randy Pausch on September 18, 2007. (Near as I can tell, the buzz came a few months later. I’m not that late. Usually. Sometimes.)

So I listened to the talk*, and I have to say — I’m not that impressed. Maybe I missed something, maybe I’ve already read too many Chicken Soup stories, maybe I’m just too depressed to appreciate the value of his advice. Professor Pausch has certainly led a remarkable and exciting life; he is clearly an intellectually formidable man in possession of creative powers, but the talk itself just wasn’t that impressive. It was kind of anticlimactic, really. It seemed too easy and pat for him to be giving that advice about brick walls existing to test how much you want something and gold being at the bottom of the crap barrel when he himself has led such a privileged life. He doesn’t seem to realize how much those privileges made possible, how many doors were opened to him before he had to learn how to reach for the knobs. Like an old acquaintance of mine, in youth he grew complacent and arrogant, imagining his good fortune to be his own doing instead of the happy roll of some third-party dice. Pausch admits to being introduced to this arrogance by a very wise man who would go on to become his mentor, but more than vestiges of it remain. This is one aspect of the talk that didn’t sit well with me.

The lecture was dissatisfying because the advice he gave, although peppered with well-timed and well-told funny stories, was common and easy and pat. It was the sort of pablum parents and teachers tell children to get them to do unpleasant things, the sort of speech you’d expect from a self-help writer shilling for his book. It sounded very much like an agglomeration of disparate self-improvement book chapters; some of it was common sense, but a lot of it was just common.

It was also discomfiting to see a man so close to death (he has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer) seem so — flippant is the wrong word, maybe casual is better — casual about it. You didn’t get the sense that he was in denial; more that he was in denial about the mystery with which he was confronted, as though his coping strategy were to distill his impending demise into a series of funny stories and PowerPoint slides. Far be it from me to criticize someone’s coping strategy, especially in such a daunting situation, but he didn’t seem to be coping. He seemed to be diverting, working through a meta-coping strategy, coping with coping, admitting to certain death but somehow maintaining a gulf between the coping and the mystery. The lecture had the air of an elaborate, practiced avoidance; something about his body language and his face just didn’t seem quite honest. It was like he was folding in on himself, hiding by revealing; he exuded the same unsettling aura of fervent belief and unidentifiable dissembling as a motivational speakers whose success is still so new and fresh that he believes what he’s saying.

Pausch mentions that his mentor called him an excellent salesman. I think this is the most honest moment in the talk. He radiates this unsettling mix of earnest and disingenuous, and for that reason I can’t really take anything he says seriously — either I’ve heard it before, or it’s too pat. If your brain is that big, and you’re that confident and crafty, and you’ve had a stable family and a steady income and indulgent parents…. Well, you get the idea. There are so many reasons, so many variables beyond his control that governed what opportunities he had and what he was able to do. Of course, in the face of this final variable, the pancreatic cancer, the same one that took my grandfather (may he rest in peace) — what can he say? What is there to say? Man, say something. Don’t just stand there and talk about how we can achieve our childhood dreams as though talking your way onto NASA’s anti-gravity plane is something anybody can do if they just try hard enough. This is its own kind of evangelism, and there was something stripped and missing from the talk, and if anybody else can help me articulate it, or explain to me what and how I’m missing out, please, do.

*Those of you familiar with spiritual retreats — Christian ones, anyway — will remember “talks” as speeches about spiritual journeys and personal struggles. They generally revolve around an example of faith or courage, or the writer/speaker’s failure to set one, and the lessons, strength, and inspiration that can be drawn from that experience. Basically, “how to be in awe of/emulate X good person” or “how not to be a shmuck like me” and how God can help you with that. But this would better fit in another entry.

UPDATE:  I realized what was so unsettling about his delivery — it’s not just that Pausch was casual or flippant, as I had previously attempted to describe him — it’s that he seemed so emotionally unavailable, as though turning this experience into a lesson were his means of coping with unfortunate facts he has accepted only cerebrally.  I mean, what will his kids think, watching this video a few years from now, realizing that their dad couldn’t address them directly and so resorted to pretending to address a large crowd of mostly strangers instead?  But it’s late; more on this later.