What are we doing here?

Today I heard about a friend who passed away last night. Wasn’t a very close friend, but the little interactions we had a few years ago were very interesting. What struck me the most when I learned about his death is what his sister was saying about him; how he invested the last year of his life teaching others about life and death. You can read some of his teaching on a blog he wrote at http://healemru.com.

It reminded me of the Last Lecture from Randy Pausch, this Carnegie Melon professor who died less than two months ago after spending the last year of his life teaching the rest of the world about the importance of doing something with our lives.

Why wait for the last year of our lives to spread the word. I wrote an essay 10 years ago about the meaning of life (and I talk about it in this post about Making the world a better place). It was one of my first writing efforts and is a little clumsily written, but the essence of that essay can be summarized simply in two rules of life:

1. Do everything you can to make the life of others more enjoyable, either now or in the future.
   
   
2. Enjoy every moment of your life…
   Thanks to all that others have done in the past (and present)
   to make our lives more fun today.

In an even simpler way

1. Give for the future
2. Receive from the past

Darwin explained how natural selection helped species adapt to their environment by the survival of the fittest. Humans have found ways to adapt the environment to their needs and the ones that survived were those who paved the way for the coming generations… This is what makes us human…


So be human and invest your life in transforming our environment to better suit our needs, including yours… I know I will…

And never, ever, forget… to have fun!!!

BYE
MAD… a little sad, but still MAD…