The Publisher | Jimmy Dean

Lessons on Love

Dear Readers:

Exactly how would you begin an issue on a theme as big as love?
Here’s a start: Dr. Randy Pausch died last year. On July 25. A Friday. He lost his life to pancreatic cancer at the age of 47. He left behind a wife and three very young children.

I just finished reading The Last Lecture, a book he co-authored. My neighbor gave it to me for Christmas, and I could never thank him enough for introducing me to this profoundly beautiful essay. It moved me as no book has in a great while and helped me better understand this little thing called love.

His story goes like this. After being diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and given 3 to 6 months to live, he scheduled his “last lecture,” a ritual, final speech that tenured professors everywhere present before students and faculty at their school upon retirement.

Pausch was the highly revered head of the computer sciences lab at Carnegie Mellon University. He, probably more than anyone, worked to make virtual reality a reality. He was gifted and passionate about life. And he created a legacy far beyond what his giant imagination could fathom. Millions are learning a new layer of love through his final work, his last lecture.

In his one hour and 18 minute talk, he clearly and completely drew us a picture of what real, palpable love looks like. For in the enormously painful and private process of dying, he joyously worked to prepare his family and friends for a life without him. The pictures he painted while speaking to the 400 or so in attendance were, and continue to be, a most moving thesis on love. I’ve never seen the concept of love so brilliantly expressed through words.

Not nearly so tear-jerking, we are joyously offering up some stories in this issue that reflect on love here in Charlotte County and southwest Florida, from three couples who have been married for a combined 194 years to romantic weekend getaways for you and your loved one.

I close this letter with Pausch’s own words, not from his last lecture, but from the speech he gave at Carnegie Mellon’s 2008 graduation, just a little more than two months before he died:

It is not the things we do in life that we regret on our death bed. It is the things we do not. Find your passion and follow it. And if there is anything that I have learned in life, you will not find that passion in things…Your passion must come from the things that fuel you from the inside. That passion will be grounded in people. It will be grounded in the relationships you have with people and what they think of you when your time comes.

Sincerely,

Jimmy Dean, Publisher