MOVED STORY

No Typical Days

RD: You're obsessive about time management. Learned any new tricks?
Pausch: When I was diagnosed, we decided to move from Pittsburgh to Virginia, where my wife has family. We could have afforded professional packers. But all these people wanted to help us. We thought, We'll save a few thousand dollars, but beyond that, it's a tangible thing that will be good for people who'd find it hard to say goodbye. Forty people showed up. And they all had something to do. So let people help you.

RD: Any other lessons along the way?
Pausch: Make clear that people understand what your circumstances are. And looking for pity-that's a mistake.

RD: How important is humor?
Pausch: Everybody makes their own choices. When we got the news that the cancer had metastasized, Jai and I cried and held each other. Then we made a pact: We're going to laugh. And we do laugh. A lot. We joke about the cancer. And everything else.

RD: In your book, it's striking how your friends treat you. "Saint Randy" gets no respect.
Pausch: When I went scuba diving with old friends, one of them said, "Don't bother putting sunscreen on Randy." Humor is one of the greatest gifts our species has been given. To lose it would be terrible.

RD: You've written, "If you live your life right, the dreams will come to you." Any new dreams?
Pausch: More like short-term goals: making memories. The first thing I did, as we were buying the house, was to take our son Dylan to Florida for a swim with dolphins. I thought, I don't remember much when I was five, so swimming with a dolphin was my best shot. I try to do many things like that. And to be savvy that way.

RD: What are your thoughts about your last lecture?
Pausch: It was a magical experience. Afterward I felt, Now I can go in peace. Then some jerk from local TV pushed a mike in my wife's face and asked, "Your husband will die soon-how do you feel?" A good thing there was a crowd between him and me.

RD: William Wordsworth wrote, "Our souls have sight of that immortal sea/which brought us hither." Do you have any intimations of immortality?
Pausch: Not in a personal or existential sense. In a professional capacity, through the Alice Project, millions of kids will learn to program computers and have fun. That's what my career was all about-doing hard things and having fun doing them. Alice can be a legacy. And it was nice to get 10,000 e-mails saying, "Your lecture bettered my life."

RD: I was telling a friend about you. She asked, "Where do people find the courage?" I felt her answer was contained in her question: People don't have the courage, they find it. What do you think?
Pausch: I don't get that what I've done has been in any way courageous. I have met people who were so much braver. Sometimes I'm struck by the fact that I'm leaving three kids-and then I see a guy down the hall with five. As for what I said in the last lecture at Carnegie Mellon, a lot of people would have said that. They just didn't have the good fortune to be a professional lecturer.

RD: You sound like the dying Lou Gehrig, when he said farewell to his fans and fellow players in Yankee Stadium and called himself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.
Pausch: I am the luckiest. It rips my heart that my kids won't have a dad. But it's not the years. It's the mileage. I wouldn't choose to die at 47, but I've had a hell of a life.