I went to see an orthopedic doctor this evening to get him to look at my right arm which has been troubling me for weeks now. Unfortunately most doctors seem to have the impression that their time is valuable, but ours is not, so they have no problem leaving patients sitting around for ever waiting for the promised consultation.

I decided a while ago that I could either let the frustration annoy me or recognize that these guys are unlikely to change and use the time wisely instead.

So I took a book with me today – The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. It’s written by a college professor dying of cancer who has one last chance to speak to his students and peers. He takes the opportunuty to speak on life’s values, anticipating that this talk will live on as his legacy to his three children who are so young they will probably not even remember their father a few years after his death.

Pausch tells stories about his life that portray his values and one tale from his own childhood made a real impact on me.

He records how his parents permitted him to decorate his own bedroom as a teenager and how he and his friends took months to personalize that space in a very special way. One of the features was that they painted an elevator door on one wall with buttons to the side numbered from one to six, showing that there were six floors.

Randy Pausch actually lived in a ranch, so the joke was that there was a pretend elevator that could take you far higher. But the writer admitted he later wondered why he didn’t number the floors to 75 or even 95. Why did he stop at 6? – it was all imaginary, so his imagination should have soared higher.

I never want my own lack of vision, faith or imagination to keep me from going as far as God intends.

Let’s paint our elevators with buttons all the way to the very top.