Childhood Dreams

There is a meme travelling around blogland. It's called 200 things you must do before you die, or some such. You know the ones - you highlight which ones you've done already. I read through one a couple of days ago and it was a bit of fun.

Yesterday I watched Randy Pausch's Last Lecture. Have you seen it? Randy Pausch, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University delivered a 76 minute speech in September last year on lessons he had learned in life. It was neither a dry technical argument nor a self-help guide but a sharing of what his life had taught him. He was suffering from pancreatic cancer and wrote the speech for his children. Randy died in July this year, aged 47.

What spoke to me was that Randy didn't talk about what he wished he had done; he didn't refer to a "bucket list" that he developed later in life and he didn't refer to lists that had been written by other people. Rather he drew on his own childhood dreams (from the perspective of a 9 year old) and how and to what extent he achieved those. Surprisingly, and through dogged determination, he had achieved them all in one way or another and spoke about what it was that enabled him to do that.

That seemed to me to be perfect. To think back to when you could dream big dreams and be confident that they were within your grasp. And that they are your dreams and not the dreams other people think you ought to have. That is your true bucket list.

As a child I can remember I wanted

• to be a spy, an Egyptologist, and a journalist
• to be able to sing (and be in a West End musical)
• to visit the Pyramids
• to paint my room deep purple
• to own a pair of high-heeled boots

At 40 years of age I have the boots, my room as a child was painted a pale lilac and at 12 years of age, when asked during confirmation classes, I told the Bishop that Jesus would want me to be an Egyptologist. I think Randy Pausch would tell me that I haven't been trying hard enough.

What were your childhood dreams?