Skip to content

    “No matter how spiritually enlightened you are, or how many times you’ve thought about death and think you’re okay with it, you will grieve the life you could’ve lived when you’re dying.  You’re losing the person you could’ve become, the things you could’ve done, the things you could’ve made with your life—you’re losing that.  And there’s no way to get around that.” ~ Claire Wineland, YouTube

      “Death is actually not a scary thing.  The scary thing is living life without a passion and then realizing at the very last moment that it’s over and you haven’t done what you wanted to do—and that you’re not proud of your life.  That is much more terrifying.” ~ Claire Wineland (15), TEDxMalibu

        “I was dying.  And I couldn’t gain any kind of control on the situation.  There was no, ‘mind over matter-ing’ it for me.  My lungs were failing.  And I got hit with this huge wave of grief.  Which is not something that I had expected.  As someone who had always known that I would die young—and I had always accepted that and been okay with that—I was expecting maybe some fear, maybe some hesitation, maybe to turn into a 5-year-old then cry and want my mom… But I wasn’t expecting grief.  And what I felt grief for wasn’t the fact that I was dying, it wasn’t about fear of the unknown, it was none of that.  I felt grief for the life I could’ve lived.  I felt grief for life itself.  For all of the possibilities that it held.  And I was mad at myself.  I spent, literally, 30 minutes as my CO2 levels were rising and I slowly started to hallucinate, being thoroughly pissed at myself for waiting around for the world to tell me I was okay even though I was sick.  For waiting around for someone to tell me that I was healthy enough, that I was better enough, I was good enough to live a life that I wanted to live.  I wish that I yelled at every single person that had come into the room and said that they were sorry for me.” ~ Claire Wineland (20), EEM LA 2018

          “A lot of motivational speakers will tell you that the point of life is to be happy… I think that’s bullsh*t.  I think that happiness is an emotion—it’s some dopamine firing in your brain and it’s great and it’s awesome when it happens.  But we can’t chase happiness—we have to chase deep satisfaction and pride—and there’s a difference.  And the way that we do that is not by running away from our pain or sickness, it’s by being sick and saying, ‘So what?'” ~ Claire Wineland (19), Zappos All Hands Meeting

            “One of the most painful things about being a human being, in my opinion, is when you feel like you’re not of use to anyone and you have nothing it give.  It’s heartbreaking.  And a lot of people who are sick, feel that way because just taking care of themselves takes up so much of their time.” ~ Claire Wineland, Relatable

              “How do we make it so that when someone is born with a chronic illness, someone who is going to be sick, who might always be sick—who might die sick—can still live a life that they are proud of?  How do we teach kids who are sick, teach people who are sick in general, to not feel ashamed of their illness or their experience of life, but to learn from it and to make something from it?” ~ Claire Wineland (20), EEM LA 2018

                “I have lived a life of a lot of pain and I’m not pretending that I haven’t.  I’ve had to deal with death; I’ve had to deal with painful surgeries; I’ve had to deal with being alone and scared in the hospital.  But I have had a beautiful life—and one that I am so incredibly proud of.  And that is not in spite of having Cystic Fibrosis… That’s because of it.” ~ Claire Wineland (19), Zappos All Hands Meeting

                  “Discipline is the spark that ignites the fire of a habit.  Those fires must be lit daily, and discipline provides the original source energy.  The word discipline literally means to be a disciple to a higher purpose.  Developing the discipline to train hard every day means you become a disciple—not to the training itself, not just to looking good or stroking your ego, but to the higher purpose of developing yourself fully as a human being and as a leader.” ~ Mark Divine, The Way of the Seal

                    “Comfort imprisons us in a low-grade fear of suffering.  We naturally shy from things that hurt, not understanding how much this pattern debilitates us and keeps us from experiencing life at its fullest.  We must define our comfort zone, and then get the heck out of it!” ~ Mark Divine, The Way of the Seal