Saturday, September 13, 2008


When I got home my wife found a book she thought I might like titled "The Religious Personality". I began leafing through it and on the second page I found this -
"In many colleges and universities, on certain occasions students invite their professors to deliver a "last lecture." The students are asking the professor to talk to them on a different kind of subject from the one on which he usually lectures in the classroom. To facilitate the mood, they require the professor to put himself in the position of having an hour - one hour only, one last hour - in which to talk about whatever is of vital importance to him. They bid him raise these questions with himself: if this were my last opportunity to speak, about what would I speak? What should I say? What ought I to communicate? For what would I choose to be remembered?"
Initially I forgot about Randy Pausch and his 'last lecture' that was so popular and insightful a few months ago; and just pondered the question. It is such a large question. I tried to compose some thoughts, without sounding trite or simplistic or predictable. I never brought it to a conclusion. When you are older you begin to consider these things far more. After some thought, I realized that the reason I began this blog was to share the things that I think are the essence of a life well spent. I have been blogging since 2004 and haven't run out of subjects yet, so to distill them into an hour would be, seems to me, impossible. But it won't be necessary because, for those that care what I think, they will have the many posts which clearly spell out what is important to me. So, I felt somewhat off the hook and somewhat gratified the job is already done.
Needless to say, the living out these beliefs is a far greater task than to simply post them with a pretty picture. Jesus encourages us to keep on trying by his admonition - "men ought always to pray...."
Photo by Andre Arment

2 comments:

Joseph Pulikotil said...

Hi Fred!

A great post and many thanks to your wife who put this book in your hands.

If all of us take each day as though it is our last day, then things in this world would be totally different. People will be more loving, forgiving, helping,kind,understanding,appreciating etc. Surely there will be no terrorists and wanton killings.

If we think that this is the last time we are going to blog, we will give more thought into our blogs and each blog will be really outstanding.

If I know I am going to give a lecture for the last time and that too for one hour only, I will carefully select the subject that will make a permanent impact on the students and deliver it carefully to leave an everlasting impression.

The thing is we all think that we will live forever and only the other person dies. Therefore we continue to do things which we should not do and don't care about it. We wake up only at the time of death and realise our mistakes and regret that we could have lived a better life.

Many, many thanks for sharing this fantastic post!

Regards and best wishes!

FCB said...

Many thanks to you for your 'Oh so true' comments. I like what you said about thinking we will live forever, and there is always tomorrow to do that duty we neglect today. Oh that it were not so true in my life, but, better today.
God bless,
Fred