The brick walls are there for a reason

They are there to let us prove how badly we want things.

The title and first line of this post come from a lecture given by a 47-year-old professor at Carnegie Mellon University who is dying of pancreatic cancer, giving, literally, his final lecture. Watch the report of this amazing, exuberant man. You will not be sorry you spent the 4 minutes and 40 seconds that it takes.

(If the video player doesn’t show in this post anymore, you can click here to see it.) My thanks to my friend Peter O’Connell for posting the link to this remarkable video on the VO-BB.