Anybody that knows me is fully aware of my love for my family. So, what’s different about me? I know that my readers love their families also. Therefore, what is so special about mine? Interestingly, I just went over this very matter with an old friend, a former colleague of mine. She wanted to know what I was up to. Actually, it was I that really wanted her to grasp what drives me and why.

I told this colleague, which I haven’t seen or heard from for nearly four decades, that there are essentially two things that explain the engine behind what motivates me at 76-years old and counting. The first is that I discovered that I had done the dance with death twice and didn’t realize it. I had dinner with a friend of a former student of mine who I had never met. His name is Mike Schmitt.

Mike and I got together at Kitsch’n on Roscoe in Chicago. It is located at 2005 W. Roscoe St. and N. Damen in the Roscoe Village. We had a dinner discussion for a couple hours. In reality, it was more like my rattling off a deluge of ideas about important issues swirling around inside my head. At the end of dinner, Mike asked one question, “Have you ever watched or read Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture?” I said no and continued my one-sided discussion, while Mike politely listened. However, as we left the restaurant, he said that he’d send me a link to The Last Lecture. By the time I got home, it was late, and I went to bed. The next morning, there was his email with the link to this video, which lasted 1:16:26.

I sat in front of my computer and was mesmerized by the Pausch lecture. Thanks to Mike, that video resulted in one of two or perhaps three most serendipitous moments in my entire life.

This is what happened to me after watching Pausch’s The Last Lecture

My eureka moment changed me forever. I had done the dance twice and didn’t realize it until I watched Pausch give his very last lecture. He died of pancreatic center a half year later.

Unless you have danced with death, you won’t be able to understand what takes place within you. Obviously, I didn’t…not until Randy Pausch’s lecture. In the handful of years that have lapsed since then, I still pause and assess how much I have benefited from leading death on the dancefloor of my life. That was truly a Goldilocks moment to use an astrophysics’ term.

My next moment occurred near Inle Lake in Myanmar five years ago. I had gone to Myanmar with the single-minded desire to interview Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who is often called the Lady. Regrettably, I failed. However, my tour guide, Moh Moh told me that she had to stop to pick up some papers about where I was going next on my tour. However, she added that her daughter, who was nine years old, was home from school on winter break. We walked into her home to be greeted by her daughter, Ti Ti. “Hi! My name is Ti Ti. Do you want to play some games?”

There we sat on their living room floor and played Scrabble for nearly an hour. What an exciting moment for me. There we sat talking and laughing. I left her home realizing that I had met my granddaughter. Talk about serendipitous moments. During that week near Inle Lake, I met her two younger sisters at a daycare preschool and met their father.

If watching The Lest Lecture changed me, words fail to express how that family of five in Myanmar transformed me. Just over a year ago, I returned to Myanmar again trying and failing to sit down and interview the Lady. Nonetheless, I got to spend time with my family. My three granddaughters changed a lot in the four years between my visits. Ti Ti is now in high school and will graduate in a couple of years.

She is my assistant web administrator and has her own part of my articles’ index page. Like most grandfathers in America, I am a bit doting, which isn’t difficult. We email each other regularly. In one of my emails to her, I asked her what she wanted to do after college. I asked her to think about five things that she wanted most to do after her formal education was compete. This was Ti Ti’s reply.

Whatever she ultimately decides upon, the road to her success will be guaranteed due to her academic ability and her caring personality. Actually, she reflects her parents in both areas; they are excellent role models. I have written to her recently and gave her a couple of links to videos featuring Warren Buffett. Buffett is an extremely successful investor. Here are a couple of pieces of advice to young adults starting out in the real world.

“Don’t sleepwalk through life. You really want to be doing what you love. And you can’t necessarily find it on your first job, but don’t give up until you find it.” Buffett wants those beginning their adult lives to find the right job. If they don’t, they will be sleepwalking through life.

Another equally critical advice was, “When you go out in the world, look for the job you would take if you didn't need the money.” Buffett added, “You really want to be doing what you love doing.” Essentially, Buffett is telling his readers and listeners to find the right job even if the first couple don’t meet your expectations.

What is even more interesting a suggestion which applies to one’s vocation but also to everything else in one’s life and that is demonstrating unconditional love.

Here are a couple of the videos that Ti Ti received.