On Randy Pausch, Childhood Play, and Learning to Remember at Sixty
Credit: Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture, 2007
I brought Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture with me to Mexico. Someone gave it to me years ago, and I never had a chance to read it. Too busy. Too many other things are demanding attention. Too much work to do. I have watched and rewatched the video several times, it is one of my favourites to watch when I feel uncertain about my life.
But two weeks into this retreat, with time stretching out in ways I am not used to, I picked it up. Started reading. And Randy asked a question that stopped me cold: What were your childhood dreams?
¿Cuáles eran tus sueños de infancia?
He wrote about his own experiences: being in zero gravity, playing in the NFL, authoring an article for the World Book Encyclopedia, being Captain Kirk, winning stuffed animals at amusement parks, and being a Disney Imagineer (Pausch & Zaslow, 2008). He could name them. List them. Tell the stories of how he pursued each one.
I closed the book and sat there for a long time, not wanting to answer. Because the honest answer was: I do not remember. No me acuerdo. Not clearly. Not in any way that feels real or reachable.
I remember that I had them. I know there were things I wanted to be, do, and become. But somewhere between seven and sixty, those dreams got buried under layers of survival, responsibility, and the endless work of just getting through.
Enterrados. Buried. Pero no muertos. But not dead.
And I realized: the same thing that suppressed my capacity for play also suppressed my ability to remember what I wanted before I learned what was realistic, achievable, and appropriate for someone with my background and resources and limitations.
La misma cosa. The same thing. El juego y los sueños, ambos enterrados juntos. Play and dreams, both buried together.
I am sixty years old, and I cannot remember what I wanted to be when I grew up.
Senior Puppy
Photo Credit: Amy Tucker, 2026
This should not hurt as much as it does. But it does. Because it means I have spent decades living without reference to those early desires. Without even remembering they existed. Without asking: what did that seven-year-old want? And does she still want it? And if she does, what would it take to give it to her?
Randy Pausch had an engineering problem. He had months to live, children to teach, and dreams to pass on. My problem is different but somehow related. I have years left, hopefully decades. But I have lost contact with the person who knew how to dream without editing, who knew how to want without calculating the probability of success, who knew how to play without needing justification.
And I am trying to find her again.
I have been reading this book slowly. A few pages each morning on the patio. Letting it sit with me. Letting Randy’s urgency teach me something about my own squandered time. Letting his clarity about what matters help me see what I have been avoiding.
¿Qué pasó con los sueños? What happened to the dreams?
¿Dónde están ahora? Where are they now?
What Randy Knew that I Forgot
I keep coming back to this as I read: Randy Pausch’s lecture is about achieving childhood dreams. But underneath that is something more fundamental: he remembered what they were. He could name them. He could tell you which ones he achieved, which ones he enabled for others, and which ones he had to let go.
He stayed connected to that child self who wanted things before learning whether wanting them was wise, possible, or realistic.
My Sweet Seniorita
Photo Credit: Amy Tucker, 2026
I did not.
Somewhere in the process of growing up in circumstances that required constant adaptation, constant resilience, and constant reinvention, I lost track of what I originally wanted. Or maybe I decided those wants were dangerous. Distracting. Luxuries I could not afford when survival required all my attention.
Brown and Vaughan (2009) write about how childhood play deprivation creates deficits that persist into adulthood. But I was not play-deprived as a child. I played. I had imagination. I had dreams. I had that glorious, unselfconscious absorption in make-believe, adventure, and creating worlds that did not have to answer to adult logic.
But somewhere between childhood and adulthood, I put all of that away. And the worst part is, I do not remember the moment I decided to stop. It was not dramatic. Not a conscious choice. Just a gradual fading. A slow erasure. Until one day I looked around and realized I could not remember the last time I wanted something just because I wanted it, not because it served some strategic purpose or met some external expectation.
Randy kept his dreams. I lost mine. And sitting here at sixty, watching sea lions play, I am trying to understand: how do you find what you have lost when you cannot remember exactly what it was?
The Dream I Do Remember
El Sueño Que Sí Recuerdo
There is one dream I remember. Barely. Faintly. Like something seen through fog.
I wanted to be a writer.
Quería ser escritora.
Not an academic writer. Not a scholar producing articles for peer-reviewed journals. Just… a writer. Una escritora de verdad. Someone who tells stories. Someone who makes meaning through words. Someone whose writing helps other people understand themselves better, feel less alone, find language for experiences that felt too big or too complicated or too shameful to name.
I remember sitting in my grandmother’s house as a child, reading books, thinking: I want to do this. I want to make people feel the way this book makes me feel. Connected. Understood. Less alone.
And then I grew up and learned that writing is not a reliable career. That serious people have backup plans. That you need security before you can afford creativity. That passion does not pay bills.
So I became a scholar instead. Learned to write in ways that met academic standards. Learned to produce work that served institutional needs. Learned to measure success by publications, citations, and conference presentations.
And somewhere in all that learning, I stopped writing the kind of writing that made me want to write in the first place.
This retreat is me trying to find that again. This blog. These daily reflections. This attempt to write in ways that sound like thinking, that honour experience as data, that trust that someone reading this might feel less alone because I am willing to say: I lost my dreams. I forgot how to want. I put away play because I thought I had to in order to survive.
Nash (2004) calls this Scholarly Personal Narrative. A methodology that allows lived experience to count as data when properly theorized and critically examined. But underneath the methodology is something simpler: permission. Permission to write the way I wanted to write before I learned all the rules about how writing should sound.
Randy achieved his childhood dreams. I am trying to remember mine. And maybe that is okay. Maybe sixty is not too late to ask: what did I want before I learned to want only achievable things? And what would it mean to give that to myself now, even if it looks different than it would have looked at seven?
My Sweet Lady
Photo Credit: Amy Tucker, 2026
Here is what I am learning: play and childhood dreams are connected in ways I did not understand before.
Dreams are what you want. Los sueños son lo que quieres. Play is how you practice wanting. El juego es cómo practicas querer. Children play at being the things they dream about. Play astronaut. Play teacher. Play explorer. Play artist. The play is how the dream stays alive. How it gets rehearsed. How the child learns what that dream might feel like if it came true.
When you stop playing, you stop wanting to practice. Cuando dejas de jugar, dejas de practicar querer. And when you stop practicing wanting, the dreams fade. Not all at once. But gradually. Poco a poco. Until you can no longer remember what they were.
I stopped playing because survival required seriousness. And when I stopped playing, I stopped rehearsing the dreams. Stopped imagining what they would feel like. Stopped giving them shape, texture, and presence in my daily life.
And now, trying to recover play, I am discovering: the dreams are still there. Buried. Waiting. But I cannot access them directly through thinking, analysis, or strategic planning. I have to play my way back to them.
Winnicott (1971) writes about play as the location where we discover who we are and what we want. Not through serious self-examination but through the spontaneous, creative, unselfconscious exploration that play allows. Play is how we find out what brings us alive. What captures our attention. What we return to again and again is because it calls to something essential in us.
Watching sea lions yesterday, I felt something wake up. Algo despertó. Not a specific dream. Just the sense that dreaming is possible. Que soñar es posible. That wanting things just because I want them is allowed. That I do not have to justify every desire with strategic reasoning, probability analysis, or risk assessment.
My Sweet Love
Photo Credit: Amy Tucker, 2026
I came back to the cottage and read more of Randy’s book. Read about how he pursued his dreams not because they made sense but because they called to him. And I thought: the sea lions understand this instinctively. Randy understood it consciously. And I am somewhere in between, trying to learn what both of them already know.
The sea lions want to play. So they play. Quieren jugar. Entonces juegan. They want to ride waves. So they ride them. They want to leap. So they leap. Quieren saltar. Entonces saltan. There is no gap between wanting and doing. No hay brecha entre querer y hacer. No calculation about whether the want is realistic, appropriate, or likely to succeed.
And watching them, I thought: I used to be like that. Before I learned to edit my wants. Before I learned that some dreams are more acceptable than others. Before I learned that admitting you want something gives people the power to disappoint you, I was safer not to want anything too much.
The sea lions do not protect themselves by not wanting. They want fully. They play fully. They risk disappointment by trying. And they seem… joyful. Alive. Present.
I want that back.
Sea Puppies
Photo Credit: Amy Tucker, 2026
Randy’s Time Limit, My Extension
El Tiempo de Randy y Mi Tiempo
Randy Pausch had months. Randy tenía meses. I have years, probably decades. Yo tengo años, probablemente décadas.
He used his limited time to pass on everything he wanted his children to know. To enable others’ dreams. To teach his final lessons about living well. Randy wrote that he was trying to put himself in a bottle that would wash up on shore for his children someday (Pausch & Zaslow, 2008, p. 10). A way of being present even in his absence. A way of teaching what he would not be alive to teach.
I have the opposite problem: too much time. Demasiado tiempo. Enough time that I keep postponing. Keep thinking: I will do that later. Lo haré más tarde. I will write that book someday. Algún día. I will pursue that dream when I have more security, more time, more energy, and more certainty that it will work out.
But here is what Randy’s lecture teaches without saying it directly: time limits clarify. Los límites de tiempo aclaran. When you know time is short, you stop negotiating with yourself about what matters. You stop waiting for conditions to be perfect. You stop postponing joy until after you have finished all the serious work.
You do what matters. Now. Ahora. Because now is all you have. Porque ahora es todo lo que tienes.
I do not have his urgency. But I could use some of it. Because sixty is not young. Because the time I am squandering waiting for perfect conditions is time I will not get back. Because every day I spend not writing the way I want to write, not playing the way I used to play, not pursuing the dreams I have forgotten how to name is a day spent living at partial capacity.
Not because I might die tomorrow (though I might). But living fully does not require a terminal diagnosis. It just requires recognizing that postponing joy is a choice. And it is a choice I have been making unconsciously for decades.
Randy made the conscious choice to live fully in his remaining months. I am trying to make the conscious choice to live fully in my remaining decades. Not because time is short but because time is precious even when there is lots of it. Because I have one life and it is happening now, and I do not want to arrive at the end having never asked: what did I want? And did I give it to myself? And if not, why not?
Lo Que El Juego Enseña Sobre Los Sueños
I have been playing for two weeks now. Small ways. Tentative ways. Humming. Swimming for pleasure. Skipping three steps. Following curiosity without needing it to be productive.
And something is happening that I did not expect: wants are surfacing.
Los deseos están surgiendo. Wants. Deseos.
Small wants at first. I want to swim longer. Quiero nadar más tiempo. I want to sit and watch pelicans without checking the time. I want to write this blog post even though it will not count toward my thesis word count. I want to buy this small carved turtle from the vendor on the beach, not because I need it, but because looking at it makes me happy.
Small wants. Deseos pequeños. Silly wants, maybe. Wants that do not serve strategic purposes or advance career goals. Just wants. Solamente deseos.
And underneath the small wants, larger ones are stirring. Still foggy. Still not clear enough to name precisely. But there. Waiting. Getting stronger as I practice the small wants, as I learn that wanting is allowed, as I remember that I am allowed to pursue things just because they call to me.
I think this is how you find lost dreams. Not by thinking about them. Not by analyzing what you should want, or what you used to want, or what you ought to want now. But by practicing wanting in small ways until the muscle memory comes back. Until wanting feels safe enough that bigger wants can surface. Until you trust yourself enough to say, “This is what I want.” And I am going to pursue it not because it is realistic, appropriate, or likely to succeed, but because it calls to something in me that has been silent for too long.
Randy Pausch enabled others’ dreams. Taught his students to pursue theirs. Passed them on to his children. He understood that helping others achieve their childhood dreams was as important as achieving his own, maybe more important (Pausch & Zaslow, 2008). He called it the “head fake.” The real learning, the real gift, was not in the dream itself but in what pursuing it taught you about yourself and what you could become.
I am enabling my own dream. The one I forgot I had. The one that is still there, underneath all the layers of learned seriousness, strategic thinking, and protective not-wanting.
The dream of writing. Really writing. The kind that helps people feel less alone. The kind that tells truths I have been trained not to tell. The kind that sounds like me, not like the academic persona I learned to perform.
This blog is me practicing. This retreat is me creating conditions where that dream can breathe again. These 30 days are me trying to become the kind of person who can say, “I want this.” And then pursue it. Not someday. Now.
Key Takeaways: What Randy Taught Me
1. Dreams do not die. They just get buried.
Los sueños no mueren. Simplemente se entierran.
Randy stayed connected to his. I buried mine. But buried is not dead. Enterrado no es muerto. Buried can be excavated. It just takes time, attention, and willingness to dig through all the layers that accumulated on top.
2. Play is how you practice wanting.
El juego es cómo practicas querer.
Children know this instinctively. Adults forget it. But the mechanism still works at sixty the same way it worked at seven. When you play, what surfaces? Cuando juegas, los deseos surgen. The trick is to allow them rather than immediately edit or dismiss them.
3. Time limits clarified. But you do not need a terminal diagnosis to live fully.
Los límites de tiempo aclaran. Pero no necesitas un diagnóstico terminal para vivir plenamente.
Randy had months. I have decades. But I can borrow his clarity without needing his urgency. Can ask: if time were short, what would matter? And then do that. Now. Ahora. While there is still time. Mientras aún hay tiempo.
4. Enabling your own dreams counts.
Habilitar tus propios sueños cuenta.
Randy enabled others’ dreams. That was his path. Mine is different. I am learning to enable my own. Learning that this is not selfish but necessary. No es egoísta sino necesario. I cannot help others find their dreams if I have abandoned my own.
5. It is never too late to become who you wanted to be.
Nunca es demasiado tarde para convertirte en quien querías ser.
At seven, I wanted to be a writer who helps people feel less alone. At sixty, I am becoming that. A los sesenta, me estoy convirtiendo en eso. Slowly. Imperfectly. But really. Pero realmente. And the fact that it took fifty-three years to get here does not make it less real. Just delayed. And delays can be recovered from.
The Dreams at Sixty Look Different Than the Dream at Seven
I need to say this clearly: I am not trying to become the seven-year-old who first wanted to write. I am trying to become the sixty-year-old who knows how to want the way that seven-year-old did. Fully. Completamente. Without apologizing. Sin disculparse. Without needing permission. Sin necesitar permiso.
The dream at sixty looks different from what it would have looked like at seven. It is complicated by everything I have learned, everything I have lived through, everything I know now about how the world works, how hard things are, and how much survival costs.
But it is also enriched by all of that. Pero también está enriquecido por todo eso. The writing I can do now is writing that a seven-year-old could not have done. Because it is informed by sixty years of living. By loss and love and chronic stress and hard-won healing. Por pérdida y amor, por estrés crónico y por curación ganada con dificultad. By understanding that comes only from decades of paying attention.
Randy achieved his childhood dreams by becoming exactly who that child wanted to be. I am achieving mine by becoming who that child would have grown into if she had been allowed to keep wanting, keep dreaming, keep playing all along.
Different paths. Caminos diferentes. Same destination: living fully. Vivir plenamente. Wanting openly. Querer abiertamente. Pursuing dreams not because they are realistic but because they are real. Perseguir sueños no porque sean realistas, sino porque son reales.
Photo of a Bummer Sticker
Photo Credit: Amy Tucker, 2026
Gracias, Randy, por preguntar qué soñábamos. Thank you, Randy, for asking what we dreamed.
Por recordarme que tuve sueños. To remind me, I had dreams.
Por mostrarme que nunca es demasiado tarde. For showing me that it is never too late.
Por enseñarme que el juego y los sueños están conectados. For teaching me that play and dreams are connected.
Por vivir completamente hasta el final. For living fully until the end.
Por darme permiso para hacer lo mismo. For giving me permission to do the same.
Con décadas por delante, no meses. With decades ahead, not months.
Pero con la misma urgencia de vivir bien. But with the same urgency to live well.
Ahora. Now.
Mientras aún hay tiempo. While there is still time.
The Power of Play
Credit: NotebookLM, 20026
Thank you for the reminder, Randy.
References
Brown, S., & Vaughan, C. (2009). Play: How it shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul. Avery.
Nash, R. J. (2004). Liberating scholarly writing: The power of personal narrative. Teachers College Press.
Pausch, R., with Zaslow, J. (2008). The last lecture. Hyperion.
Pausch, R. (2007). Randy Pausch’s last lecture: Achieving your childhood dreams [Video]. YouTube. Pausch, R., with Zaslow, J. (2008). The last lecture. Hyperion.
Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and reality. Tavistock Publications.
