The Last Lecture

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 2008

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Themes

The Pursuit of Childhood Dreams

Pursuing and achieving your childhood dreams is ostensibly the book’s central theme. Because the content of Pausch’s lecture included experiences and insights gleaned from his own life, he was able to note the important patterns of his childhood desires, how his parents supported his dreams, how he accomplished these dreams, and how he helped enable his students achieve their own goals.

In recounting his life experiences, however, Pausch isn’t providing a roadmap specifically for achieving dreams but a guide for how to live a life that enables you to do so. He identifies several traits and attitudes that serve this goal, such as establishing specific dreams, choosing to think positively, collaborating with others, working hard, expressing gratitude, and accepting help from others.

Even unrealized dreams can serve a greater purpose. Although Pausch never achieved his dream of playing in the NFL, he notes, “I sometimes think I got more from pursuing that dream, and not accomplishing it, than I did from many of the ones I did accomplish” (35). Pausch opts to see the positive in this scenario, reframing it as a stepping stone to something greater. Though he didn’t successfully achieve this particular dream, it taught him tenacity and perseverance, and this ambition and positive thinking would propel him to success in another areas.

Pausch ultimately sees the relationship between dreams and life as cyclical. He advises readers, “If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you” (206).

The Importance of Positive Thinking

Pausch advocates a three-pronged approach to work: maintain a positive attitude, work hard, and collaborate effectively with others. He especially emphasizes the power of positive thinking and repeatedly warns against negativity, as it stymies progress, promotes unhappiness, and erodes confidence and motivation. Negativity is not productive; it “does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won’t make us happier” (139).

Pausch uses metaphors and allusions to further emphasize and illustrate this theme. He envisions the obstacles life throws in our way as brick walls. These challenges can be bypassed, surmounted, or demolished—but only with a positive attitude. Near the end of the memoir, Pausch alludes to A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh and proposes that there are essentially two types of people: Tiggers or Eeyores. Eeyores are cynical and negative people, while Tiggers are fun-loving and positive, regardless of their circumstances. Ultimately, it is up to each individual to decide which kind of person they want to be. Pausch’s own zest for life and his accomplishments are evident throughout his memoir, which proves that having a Tigger attitude, despite any obstacle, works.

Working Together

Pausch highlights teamwork as essential to work and a fact of life, and so he strove to teach his students strong collaboration skills. In all of his classes, he put students into groups of four only to scramble those groups; students were then assessed on their effective contribution to their group’s project. Even the strongest academic students could learn a lot about themselves in the process, and he believed that this was the greatest gift he could give his students as a teacher. These interpersonal skills would be the thing that set his students apart from all the other candidates competing for the same job.

This focus on collaboration is reflected by Pausch’s belief in communitarianism, a philosophy that highlights the individual’s relationship with their community. He emphasizes human connections, believing that strong interpersonal relationships lead to productive teamwork, which benefits everyone involved in the endeavor. In short, “everyone has to contribute to the common good” because “when we’re connected to others, we become better people” (176).

To bolster this point, Pausch makes connections between collaboration and the other prongs of his work philosophy, particularly positivity. He stresses that manifestations of positive thinking—such as gratitude expressed through a simple thank-you note—are essential to teamwork. Such positivity strengthens interpersonal relationships, creating a positive atmosphere that leads to more effective and productive collaboration.