Quality Over Quantity: Discovering of the True Value of Time
Every year, around 560,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with cancer (“Cancer Facts”). Approximately 53,000 of those people receive the horrific news that they have pancreatic cancer (“Key Statistics”). Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, was one of those people. Even though he was only given three to six months to live, Pausch already had an understanding of the importance of quality of living over quantity of life. He decided to voice his life journey and final moments in his novel, The Last Lecture, to teach one last lesson: Don't waste the time that you have. Randy Pausch believed that every individual person has childhood dreams
…show more content…
Randy appeals to the emotions of his readers through the persuasion of pathos, and writes about how he and his wife, Jai, fell in love and had three children. By illustrating how sad and emotional he was about leaving his family so soon due to pancreatic cancer, Pausch makes the tone and mood of the book very emotional as well. He explains that he spent a good amount of his time with his family, but his children were all very young when he was diagnosed. He writes, “I know their memories may be fuzzy. That’s why I’m trying to do things with them that they’ll find unforgettable” (Pausch 192). Fueled by his love for his family, Pausch made the most of the time that he had left with his wife and children. He never moped around his family. Instead, he decided he wanted his family to remember him in his health, so he wrote notes and filmed videos dedicated to his children as memories for the rest of their lives. Pausch knew the importance of being surrounded by love during his battle with cancer. By using the language and appeal of pathos in his memoir, Pausch was able to share this value with his readers. His goal in writing The Last Lecture was to remind people not to waste the time and the life that they have. His important message: find love in any form, because it will make the time you have vastly more
It is truly remarkable how Randy Pausch and Morrie Schwartz stories are so similar but yet so different. They both seem to have an outlook on life in a positive way, not sad or demeaning. The only crippling difference is the fact that Morrie was at the age that wasn’t abnormal to be sick and Randy was just dealt the cards for a short life. One of Professor Randy Pausch’s many quotes during The Last Lecture makes a similar point between his experience and Morrie’s when he says, “…it’s hard to raise awareness of pancreatic cancer – people who get it don’t live long enough.” ALS is such a rehabilitating disease that scientist have issues pinpointing the causes to even get close to a cure, which didn’t hinder either of their strive to keep going as far as they could.
This book was brilliant. There were moments that made me laugh, moments that made me tremble in my chair, moments that made me cry, moments that melted my heart, and moments that made me want to rip my hair out at the roots. This book has it all, and it delivers it through a cold but much needed message.
author tried to tell readers life lessons that can happen to anybody. Last but not least is to be
The PBS Frontline documentary Being Mortal focuses on doctors and their patients who are dealing with chronic illness and nearing the end of their life. It investigates how some doctors are ill-equipped to talk about chronic illness and death with their patients and how this can lead to a lesser quality of life at the end of life stage for patients. In this documentary, we followed Dr. Atul Gawade on his journey to educate himself and others about the difficult emotional aspects of dying. The director, Thomas Jennings, along with Dr. Gawade, created a fantastic documentary about how it is important for doctors to talk to dying patients about their mortality. This was effectively done by offering experiences and interviews from doctors and their patients, by following the declining path of the patient, and by showing the real life emotion of the patients, families and doctors working through to the end.
The critics who perceived this book's central theme to be teen-age angst miss the deep underlying theme of grief and bereavement. Ambrosio asks the question, "Is silence for a writer tantamount to suicide? Why does the wr...
Being in hospice care is a better alternative than being stuck in the hospital to try to avoid the unavoidable. Common misconceptions about Hospice could include that hospice makes life more miserable; however, a physician expressed his findings in Hospice,“You can only fail a patient if you fail to understand and respond to their needs. We may not be able to cure all of our patients, but if we can make them comfortable in the last moments of their lives, we will not have failed them”..Hospice care gradually emerged in the 1970s, when groups like the National Hospice Organization were formed “in response to the unmet needs of dying patients and their families for whom traditional medical care was no longer effective.”Herbert Hendin, an executive director of the American Suicide Foundations illustrates a story of a young man diagnosed with acute myelocytic leukemia and was expected to have only a few months before he died. He persistently asked the doctor to assist him, but he eventually accepted the medical treatment. His doctor told him he can use his time wisely to become close to his family. Two days before he died, Tim talked about what he would have missed without the opportunity for a
Cancer is a deadly disease that millions of people die from a year. Many loved ones are killed with little to no warning affecting families across our world. My family happened to be one that was affected by this atrocious disease. This event changed the way my family members and I viewed cancer.
“The story employs a dramatic point of view that emphasizes the fragility of human relationships. It shows understanding and agreemen...
Isn’t it overwhelming to consider the fact that approximately one in eight deaths in the world are due to cancer? To make this more comprehensible, the number of deaths caused by cancer is greater than caused by AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined. Along with the idea that this disease does not have a definite cure is a mind-staggering concept to grasp. If not caught in time, cancer means guaranteed death. These types of thoughts were floating around my head when my mother had told me that my father had mouth cancer.
Hence, The Wenders’ determination to protect their daughter in a hostile society, Uncle Axel’s willingness to love and guide his insecure nephew, and the telepaths’ devotion to their closely-knitted group remind us that no matter how corrupt the majority of society becomes, there will always be those who will keep alive the beautiful qualities that make us human. Thus, it is clear that Wyndham purposely incorporated loving relationships in the midst of suffering to keep alive our hope in the human race. Love is an unique quality that can emerge through hardships. The Chrysalids is meant to remind us that the power of this emotion can overcome despair.
I learned from the book that a former student reconnected with his old college professor Morrie who was diagnosed with ALS (a terminal disease). Through their reconnection, Mitch and Morrie begin to meet every Tuesday to discuss the different problems they face and the meaning of life. Also, choosing not to live his final months in fear. Morrie meditated on life and spread his ideas in the form of short aphorisms. One aphorism that hit me is “Learn to forgive yourself and to forgive others”.
The student, Mitch Albom, (also the author) decides to fulfill the promise he had made to Morrie after graduation, of keeping in contact. He catches a flight to Massachusetts on a Tuesday and does this for the next several Tuesdays till the death of Morrie. On those Tuesdays, classes were being held, not in the all too familiar classrooms of the college, but in the intimate setting of Morrie’s home. They would write their final thesis paper on “The Meaning of Life.” The paper was to include but not be limited to the following topics: Death, Fear, Aging, Greed, Marriage, Family, Society, Forgiveness, and A Meaningful Life. Every Tuesday when Mitch would arrive he could see the brutal deterring of Morrie’s small disease infested body. Yet the spirit of this small dying man was bigger than life itself. This confused Mitch, but as the story progresses Mitch begins to comprehend why this man with only months to live is still so filled with life.
‘Being Mortal’ was a fascinating read about a young man who grows in the understanding of death and dying and what matters most in the end. We all have constraints and no matter how well we take care of ourselves and live our life, death comes to us all; and how we meet that end can be very different depending on how we want to spend the last moments of our journey. Medical science has its power and pushes the boundaries of life and death, but it can’t always save you, it won’t always work out the way that you hope it does. Doctors like Atul Gawande struggle to fix everyone’s problem and cure the patients who come into the hospital; but as the book progresses Atul finds that there are ways to handle patients’ lives and it doesn’t always involve
Many individuals have different aspects as to how life should be valued. Some individuals live life a day at a time while attempting to make the most as if their last breath was upcoming. In a Stanford Commencement in 2005, Apple CEO Steve Jobs quo...
Like far too many others, cancer has posed as the greatest hurdle in my life. When I was twelve years old, my grandfather was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, a rare and largely incurable form of cancer that proves to be immensely aggressive to the body of which it takes over. As fortunate as I was to live just down the road from my grandparents’ farm, I