Brick Walls

“The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.”

― Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

When the pursuit of love puts up a brick wall, we have two options; look somewhere else or blast through it , no matter how impossible that seems or no matter how hard. I recently gave my daughter some bad advice. She was applying for a summer job and they called her back for "another interview" three times. I said to her, "They're stringing you along.  Go look for another job." But she persisted and went back, for their fourth interview, and they hired her. They told her of all the candidates, "She could perform the job the fastest."
   What does this mean?  I think it means to follow the wisdom of Randy Pausch. Don't give up on love or on loving a particular person, especially if you really, really want him or her.

Although he graduated magna cum laude from Brown University, Randy Pausch  nearly didn't get in to Brown in the first place -- he was wait listed. It was a brick wall that some might have walked away from. But Pausch had a novel way of looking at obstacles:

"The brick walls are there for a reason," he said during his lecture. "The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something."

He kept calling the college until it let him in.

Pausch maintained that his most formidable brick wall was a beautiful graduate student named Jai Glasgow. Pausch was 37, with a reputation as something of a ladies' man, when he met her at a lecture. Pausch was smitten, but she resisted. However, he refused to give up, and they eventually married and had three children.

Randy Pausch and his soul mate and future wife, Jai Glasgow