80% of Life

I bet you are probably wondering why I have a picture of this guy on my blog...well, I am a big Oprah fan. Watch it about everyday. This week there was one that really made me stop & reflect. They had a Carnegie Mellon professor on the show who is suffering from pancreatic cancer and basically has 3 months to live. Professors usually give a "Last Lecture" before they leave. He literally had to give his last lecture last month & now it is one of the most popular downloads on the Internet. He basically talks about all the important things in life: people not things, family, pursuing your dreams, etc. Sad to know he is pretty young and leaving behind a wife & 3 kids under the age of 5.

Anyway, a point he made that really hit me was his little theory on life. He sees life as being 10 percent white, 10 percent black and 80 percent gray. He said, "You can go through life and say, 'Gee, that 80 percent gray part, that's black, and life is a bad thing,'" he says. "Or you can say that 80 percent gray part's part of the white, and it's the goodness and the light. I want to view life that way. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. That 80 percent in the middle really can go either way, and if you decide you want to make it go good, not bad, you have a lot more power to make that happen than you might think." He said even though he is dying, he wants to look back at this time in his life and have it be happy. This really rang true to me because I look back on my life and it's true; there are some really good times and some really hard times, but most of it was how I wanted it to go. I like this theory because it places the power & decision with us, not our circumstances. I mean I don't think there could be any harder time in life than facing death and you wouldn't believe how composed and positive this guy was. But, like he said, he is making a choice to live life the way he wants. So, I like to think that with the 80% of my life that's gray, hopefully, I can turn most of it into the happy part of my life. I am going to try and create a link for anyone who wants to listen to his lecture: Watch Randy's famous "Last Lecture." Maybe it will work...