86. RANDY PAUSCH: The brick walls
Randy Pausch (1960-2008) was a computer-science and human-computer interaction professor at Carnegie Mellon University. After being diagnosed with terminal cancer and given only 3-6 months to live, he gave a now-famous speech called The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. The lecture is a fun and inspiring account of how Pausch achieved (most of) his childhood dreams, from experiencing zero gravity to working for Disney. After being uploaded on YouTube, the talk went viral and Pausch went on to appear on Oprah and write a best-selling book.
Watch the video here. It’s pretty inspiring, and the man’s positivity while living with the knowledge he’s going to die has to be seen to be believed.
Thanks to Jason for sending me the speech and quote.
- When I started this site, my little Shaolin Monk character was meant to appear in lots of comics. Surprisingly, this is only his second appearance. Here’s the first one way back in the third comic.
- I posted an article yesterday featuring October’s readers of the month. Go have a read and meet some fellow Zen Pencils readers with some great stories.
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Wow. Wonderful job with this one Gav. I love his look of sorrow before he continues on.
yeah the sorrow look….bcos he is ready for another battle, another struggle, another wall
Good one Gav!!!!
Indeed Good one .
oh dear, at first I was thinking this is turning into Genghis Khan’s quote about the Great wall or something
Perfect timing on this one Gav – this industry, as you well know, is full of brick walls.
brilliant! gotta lot of thinking to do now…
sheer brilliance ! great job !
Nice, Gav. I’ve seen Randy’s last lecture and read his book and it’s really very inspiring. He’s an inspiration and someone whom I think has helped to make a difference in people’s lives.
Keep it up.
G
Looks like the brick walls are there to stop people unlucky enough to choose a section with crumbly bits that cause them to fall. I think all those guys wanted it badly enough and your monk was just lucky.
You’ve got a little negativity on your face, nazi dwight.
@TUDZA: You said it. A decision is separate from its outcome. It’s OK to fail after giving your best.
If two are in a desert, and only enough water is on one of them for one, the one with must keep the bottle and not share – so one may live. This is not to say that many have done otherwise, or that I would do the same – for how do you judge when there is enough water? How can a person bear to watch his fellow man falter? We must instead help each other as much as possible – so one day we may all scale our walls – when we do this, we will find that we somehow without noticing have scaled our own. I have saved my friend’s life in this way, when she slipped while climbing. I climbed to her hand, and pulled her to safety from a slippery slope to a branch that provided support through its careful growth on the easily crumbling face.
True enough. Sometimes luck plays a more decisive role than skill. That’s way I find “success” so hard to measure. But without effort you won’t get anywhere too. IMHO, it all comes down to choice.
Bad luck is the worst excuse.
Very cool man! Love it!
Thank you so much for making this quote!! Randy Pausch is a personal hero for me as watching his speech made me study the career i love and your comics and quotes give me a lot of inspiration each week!
Hello from venezuela!!
Brilliant! I’m reminded of the scene from the Dark Knight Rises where they try climbing out of the pit.
Even i felt the same.
Randy Pausch is my hero. If I could face my life with a tenth of the courage with which he faced the end of his, I will consider myself a complete success.
Thank you for this. He absolutely belongs in the realm of the other greats in your lineup of quotes.
I can’t wait for this print! Definitely buying this one.
Gav! when am i gonna get a Zen Pencil Omnibus? I read your October’s readers of the month. Though I am nowhere close to any of those real life heroes, comfortable happy in job and life, your work continues to inspire me everytime. It inspires me to be child like, curious, inspires me to be more than what I am everyday. If only i could find words fit for expressing.
Do give it a thought if you havent already. A Zen Pencils omnibus!
There’ll be a book collection one day – it’s one of my goals.
So happy to know that Gav
and I will be waiting! 
Somehow I don’t feel the comic corresponds with the quote very well. The words say, “The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough”. But can we say the same with those characters in the comic strips? Do they fall because they don’t want to live badly enough? Shouldn’t we take into account the different physical strength each individual has? How about the limit of the willpower of a person? (Yes, research(s) has/have been done to show that even willpower has limits)
I hope I’m making sense. Having said that, your artworks have been great! I’m really glad I stumble upon them. It helps me appreciate the words of those sayings more.
Lovely graphics, but like some others who have commented, the depiction doesn’t really gel for me. Successfully climbing a vertical wall is often not a matter of will, but ability (strength, training.) And having the will means getting up out of that big bloody hole, and finding a way out of the unfortunate circumstance of having the bridge break.
The real potential stars of the show are the ninja (although his choice of thongs is a lousy one for climbing), and the manchurian. I hope they get out of the Star Wars asteroid worm’s mouth.
First of all, I am a huge fan of yours. I love all of your art.
I loved this quote , Its close to the quote “Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down”
I somehow feel this visual representation is missing something, I didn’t feel the Shaolin monk was trying any harder than other guys, The 2nd guy was looking back/down and so excluding him. The first guy was just unlucky to get a crumbling brink. Most importantly , Nobody is getting a second chance! The monster should be taken off I feel.
Again.. Huge fan! You really don’t know how many lives you are touching by your work. Love the fan of the month
True that.
The comic may be lacking the emphasis that the monk had indeed tried his best, while the rest gave up with little or no determination, hence portraying the idea of “The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough”.
However, I still greatly appreciate all your works, Gav. They have inspired me just as how Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture did.
Looooove this one, Gav! I love it when you draw these kungfu cartoon people. I am sure you enjoy drawing them as much as I looking at them. OK, Sharing it NOW!
Dude. Killing off a samurai – Not Cool.
And that poor wushu master. Why did they have to die?
Awesome post Gav:)
Wow. Now Pink Floyd’s The Wall album got one more meaning.
Thank you.
Actually, this one is a huge miss. What about the Bodhisattva? What about compassion? What about helping others escape their condition? Isn’t that what having superior strength of will is all about, and why we admire it? It’s certainly not because we succeed and take satisfaction from the failure of others.
It’s really hard to believe that a teacher, responsible for inspiring others around him to a higher level of knowledge, would say something like this.
Okay, I usually love the pictures on this site and the quotes associated with them, but while the quote is fine here, the comic shows a nasty, almost cynical streak that I hope is a one-time slipup. It also shows that willpower isn’t everything, and in fact can come to nothing without luck, which runs counter to the message of the quote. Not one of your best, unfortunately.
any chance you can get the rights to make prints of this. or if not, post a more printer friendly version of this. personally, i prefer to buy your prints. but if that cant be done, a printer friendly version, with the screens all fitting on one regular printer page would be much appreciated.
I’m afraid some of you are missing the point here. It’s not about luck, it’s nothing to do with limits of willpower and it certainly is not about physical strength-these are just some of the excuses we use in situations of failure. If you dedicate yourself, the luck will knock on your door and no, there are no limits of willpower, whoever said that was limited. The only limits are those of your vision. Anyway, it’s really amazing to have so much inspiration in you and to share it with the people, so thank you, Gav, for all the great work!
Sorry, but that is not just untrue, it basically blames everyone who doesn’t make it for their own fate, which is decidedly unfair. There are people out there who fail not because they “didn’t want it enough”, whatever that is supposed to mean, but because circumstances weren’t right, or because someone else got there first. Just because it’s used as an apology doesn’t mean it’s never true, otherwise no one would ever have gotten the idea of using it as an apology in the first place.
And of course willpower has limits. Everyone will give up eventually – success is measured by whether this happens before or after you have your big break. Also, there are plenty of dedicated unlucky people in the world, whereas I, as one of the laziest human beings ever born, will probably never have existential worries again in my life due to one enormously lucky break I got five years ago.
Thanks for the comments. The bricks didn’t crumble, they lost their grip – I should have made that clearer. Appreciate the feedback.
Thank you for linking to his video. This is the first time I ever watched it.
As for the comic, I got that they slipped, I’ve been hiking(not climbing) and I know the experience of losing a foothold and slipping. So I understand what you were doing there.
However, the monster at the bottom was the only part that I didn’t see as relating to the analogy of climbing walls. But I guess we do all have our own monsters to fight or to get away from. Just failing to see how it relates to the quote.
As for the people talking about the different masters failing where the Little Shaolin made it consider this:
I like to think L.S. is a Bruce Lee type character who is pliable and willing to learn from all disciplines, and that is how he was able to make it. Am I right?
Trust me, I love Samurai (you can see the Seven Samurai poster in my studio photo I posted a few months ago). Since Little Shaolin is the logo/mascot of this site, he just has to be victorious.
Great comic. I recognized Randy’s quote from the very beginning. He was an amazing man who has inspired millions with his last lecture… “I finally nailed the venue and they changed the name!”
Thank you for helping to spread his message.
Cheers!!
Gav,
You make the world a better place.
Thanks,
Thanks Gregory, that’s prob the nicest compliment ever
Now i have a different image to this quoth, not a high wall to scale, but rather to fence in a garden. And some people just looking inside or even not looking beyond the wall. But some are looking for a way in, with dilligence and persistence and finding it.
Maybe one warrior is stronger (or luckier) than the other. But neither of them are very smart. Two smarter warriors would wait for one to get across, upon which the other would toss him a line from the end of the broken bridge. The bridge would be repaired, then all might cross. Sort of like how Buddha built a bridge across the sufferings of this world with his own personal sacrifice, allowing all others less strong to cross…right?
WOOOooowW! I love this comic, Gav. The arrangement of each panel was well-conceived. The art is very masterful as always..and the message was very intense, haunting and sincere. Yes we all have brick walls in our lives that we must overcome. I just hope that one day soon I will overcome one of mine. By the way, thanks for fueling my dreams to pursue my art. Thanks to your tips, I went and invested on my own graphics tablet and am now finally learning digital art. I am not aiming to make money of it but it is just really something that I love to do. Anyway, keep it up.
Great, thanks Catie!
Oh, so that’s what that huge-ass wall was for!
I get that your monk wanted it more / had more willpower, but I don’t get why he went on without mending the bridge. To reach the top is an achievement, but the real hero helps others too. And while he could not help the other two climbers, he could have thrown a rope back to help others repair the bridge.
When I first read this comic, I felt like a lot of the other commentors: I thought it was very cynical and not at all in line with the regular morale.
But then I clicked on the youtube link and that was an odd decision. I’m quite busy studying for an exam, at the moment and don’t really have 75 minutes to watch Pausch’ Last Lecture, but I did. And I’m very happy that I did; what an amazing person and lecture!
Then I returned to this comic and read it again. Now I feel you have done a fine job. The context isn’t necessarily the one Randy was talking about, but it still fits. I still think it’s a bit cynical, but Randy had the best intentions when he said this.
So Gav, I’d like to thank you for pointing me towards Randy’s Last Lecture and for keeping me motivated and moved with all of your comics.
Best quote ever !
And the comic is really impressive
Thank for your art and inspiration, Gav!
Gav—I absolutely love the middle frame with the quote, “The brick walls are there to stop people who don’t want it badly enough.” Any way that could be turned into a print? Pretty please?
Thanks!
The little monk again. this really brings me back
Raundy Pauch was amazing. The moment I saw the first line of this comic, I knew it was a quote from him and it made me happy.
Also: In May of 2008, he addressed the graduating class, 9 months after he was told that he had 3-6 months left to live. He has some amazing inspirational things in there too. It can be watched here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcYv5x6gZTA
I love this! This speaks true to what my brother is going through right now. I’d love to buy the print. Any chance that’ll be available soon?