The filter

He said this a year after the diagnosis, to a stadium full of twenty-two-year-olds in gowns who thought they had forever.

It is not morbid. It is a filter. Take any decision you have been circling for weeks and hold it up against the fact that you will die. Watch what falls off. The embarrassment goes first. Then the fear of looking stupid. Then the opinion of that one person whose opinion you do not even respect.

Whatever is left after that is what you actually want. His point was simple enough: you are going to die anyway, so you might as well do that.