The Last Lecture

The Last Lecture
major ones.
I love a lot of pop culture clichés, too. I don’t mind when my
children watch Superman, not because he’s strong and can fly, but
because he fights for “truth, justice and the American way.” I love that
line.
I love the movie Rocky. I even love the theme music. And what I
liked most about the original Rocky movie was that Rocky didn’t care if
he won the fight that ends the film. He just didn’t want to get knocked
out. That was his goal. During the most painful times of my treatment,
Rocky was an inspiration because he reminded me: It’s not how hard
you hit. It’s how hard you get hit…and keep moving forward.
Of course, of all the clichés in the world, I love football clichés the
most. Colleagues were used to the sight of me wandering the halls of
Carnegie Mellon tossing a football up and down in front of me. It
helped me think. They’d probably say I thought football metaphors had
the same effect. But some of my students, female and male, had trouble
adjusting. They’d be discussing computer algorithms and I’d be
speaking football. “Sorry,” I’d tell them. “But it will be easier for you to
learn the basics of football than for me to learn a new set of life clichés.”
I liked my students to win one for the Gipper, to go out and
execute, to keep the drive alive, to march down the field, to avoid costly
turnovers and to win games in the trenches even if they were gonna feel
it on Monday. My students knew: It’s not just whether you win or lose,
it’s how you play the cliché.
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