I have always admired people who were dealt a hard hand in life, but manage to keep smiling and/or over come their struggle.  In the hero’s journey of storytelling the story of the underdog is a story the audience wants to see and never gets tired of seeing.  We want to see the underdog rise above adversity.  Stories of ordinary people rising above their circumstance and living extraordinary lives is more common place than we think.  But, perhaps not as common as they can be if we allow people to just be who they are without judgement.

I first saw “The Last Lecture” when it was endorsed by TED Talks.  I loved the lecture so much I watched it about three or four times from when it was posted.  Randy Pausch was dying of cancer when he gave this lecture.  While he acknowledged he was dying, he chose to live.  He used the lecture to share moments of his life that have taught him some of life’s greatest lessons that we all know, have heard, can relate to or may have forgotten.  This is his Randy Pausch lecture on “Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.”