This past weekend I found out who Sam Berns was when I stumbled across his documentary on HBO titled Life According to Sam. He was a young man who unfortunately passed away in 2014 at the age of 17 due to Progeria. His TedX talk titled “My philosophy for a happy life” has over 30,000,000 views as of August 2019.
Progeria is an extremely rare disease dubbed as the Benjamin Button disease or premature aging syndrome. It affects an extremely small percentage of the population and those affected by it usually live until their later teenage years because there is currently no known cure.
Progeria is caused by mutations of the cell nucleus; the mutations make it difficult for cells to divide thus causing the aging process to happen extremely fast.
In his Ted Talk, Sam discussed his outlook/philosophy on life. It was really inspiring to hear his stories and how he developed his philosophies.
His four philosophies are:
1) Be Ok with what you can’t do because there is so much you can do
Sam wanted to play the snare drum but could not, so he developed a type of holder/harness that would allow him to be able to play the drum
2 ) Surround yourself with people you want to be around
3) Keep moving forward
4) Never miss a party if you can help it
Sam’s philosophy revolved around his want for people to get to know him as a person and not feel bad for him. He didn’t want sympathy. He found ways to overcome his obstacles by moving them from things he couldn’t do to things that he could do. He didn’t mope or complain, he always thought about the positives and thought outside of the box.
Sam’s outlook on life is inspiring and one that we should all strive to have one day.
