Kind of like you saw with the drum earlier. However, sometimes I need to find a different way to do something by making adjustments, and I want to put those things in the “can do” category. When I can’t do something like run a long distance, or go on an intense roller coaster, I know what I’m missing out on.īut instead, I choose to focus on the activities that I can do through things that I’m passionate about, like scouting, or music, or comic books, or any of my favorite Boston sports teams.
Now this doesn’t mean that I ignore the negative aspects of these obstacles. Now people sometimes ask me questions like, “Isn’t it hard living with Progeria?” or “What daily challenges of Progeria do you face?” And I’d like to say that, even though I have Progeria, most of my time is spent thinking about things that have nothing to do with Progeria at all. The first aspect to my philosophy is that I’m okay with what I ultimately can’t do because there is so much I can do. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” – Ferris Bueller “I’m okay with what I ultimately can’t do” So this is a quote from the famous Ferris Bueller: So, for me, there are 3 aspects to this philosophy. So I’m here today, to share with you my philosophy for a happy life. I don’t think about these obstacles all the time, and I’m able to overcome most of them anyway. So even though there are many obstacles in my life, with a lot of them being created by Progeria, I don’t want people to feel bad for me. Last year my Mom and her team of scientists published the first successful Progeria Treatment Study, and because of this I was interviewed on NPR.Īnd John Hamilton asked me the question: “What is the most important thing that people should know about you?” And my answer was simply that I have a very happy life.ĪLSO READ: Life Begins at the End of Your Comfort Zone: Yubing Zhang at TEDxStanford (Full Transcript) So it’s pretty rare, and the effects of Progeria include: tight skin, lack of weight gain, stunted growth, and heart disease. It affects only about 350 kids today, worldwide. I just want to give you some more information about Progeria. So after continuous work, we made a snare drum apparatus that weighs only about 6 pounds. So my family and I worked with an engineer to design a snare drum harness that would be lighter, and easier for me to carry. However, nothing was going to stop me from playing snare drum with the marching band in the halftime show. So it was fun, but it involved no marching, and I was just so devastated. It involved some really cool auxiliary percussion instruments, like the bongos, timpani, and timbales, and cowbell. So, logistically, I really couldn’t carry a regular sized snare drum, and because of this the band director assigned me to play pit percussion during the halftime show. So just to give you an idea, I weigh only about 50 pounds. But each snare drum and harness weighed about 40 pounds each, and I have a disease called Progeria. A few years ago, before my freshman year in High School, I wanted to play snare drum in the Foxboro High School Marching Band, and it was a dream that I just had to accomplish. Listen to the MP3 Audio here: My philosophy for a happy life by Sam Berns at TEDxMidAtlantic This powerful TEDxMidAtlantic talk titled “My Philosophy for a Happy Life” was by Sam Berns who suffered and died from the premature aging disease Progeria earlier this year.
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