"Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you wanted. And it can be the most valuable thing you have to offer."

The above quote is from an incredible article that I ran across in Sunday's Parade Magazine. I loved the quote, but I loved the entire lesson I learned from the article even more.

It was a brief look into a "Last Lecture" given by a Carnegie Mellon professor that only weeks after agreeing to give the lecture was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. Obviously, after the diagnosis the "Last Lecture" took on a whole new meaning. The story explains that while the easy thing to do would be to cancel, it wasn't the best thing for this man, Randy Pausch, and his family. He needed to share his story--his incredible "life lessons." Not only does his family now have his amazing, heartfelt and overwhelmingly motivational message to hang on to for years to come, but thanks to the spread of his story, he's offered insight and hope to many others that wouldn't have ordinarily crossed his path.

If you read the story (which is just a brief excerpt of his story) http://www.parade.com/articles/editions/2008/edition_04-06-2008/1My_Last_Lecture, or if you watch his lecture on YouTube you can't help but be effected. His concepts are simple, but when I examined my own life, I realized that while they may be simple, and should be obvious, the things he points out are all too often overlooked. The simple lessons in life are what we should build on--they are the foundation for the big things.

If you haven't heard of Randy Pausch, and you haven't read his story, I encourage you to do so (there's a primetime ABC special about him tomorrow night too). While it may not change your life, it will at least give you a little hope for what life can and should be and will definitely inspire you to live each day to the fullest. As he so confidently says, "Time is all you have and you may find one day that you have less than you think."