you take away their power.

I am sick, I will probably always be sick,

and yet I am 100% content and happy with my life.

(audience clapping and cheering)

A 100%.

I have something called cystic fibrosis,

but I'm actually not here

to depress you all about cystic fibrosis.

I'm actually here to talk about how do we change

the way that we treat sick people.

How do we stop pitying them and we start empowering them?

The way that our society works, we teach sick people

that when they are sick, somehow, someway,

they cannot be as happy as normal healthy people.

We teach them that their happiness,

their contentment in life,

their joy in life is tied to how healthy they are.

I remember I was around seven or eight years old

and I was flipping through this magazine

and there's this really beautiful picture

of this artist in their New York loft apartment.

And I'm sitting there and I look around my hospital room

and I'm like, I wish I was there.

And I had more, I was like, but I'm stuck in the hospital.

And I thought, well, there's a Target right down the street

that has some twinkle lights and some throw pillows

and I have a room.

I have furniture.

Why don't I make something out of this room?

Why don't I deck it out?

So me and my nanny decided

to completely redo the hospital room

and I don't mean just put some pictures on the wall,

I mean like completely redo the room.

We were moving around the furniture, I was sweating,

my machines were beeping, the nurses were coming in,

like what are you doing, you're crazy.

And by the end, we had completely transformed the room.

And nurses and doctors from all over the hospital

came in to see it.

And so every time I ended up going into the hospital,

I would deck out my hospital room.

I started realizing, people who are sick

and nurses and doctors as well,

everyone in the medical community,

everyone in the healthcare community,

had been so stuck in this notion

that a hospital room is this cold, sterile white place

where we go to be sick and that that's all that it can be.

And we get so stuck in that

that we can not see the possibility,

we can't see what we can make out of it,

we don't see what we can do with it.

I started realizing that our lives in a way are like this.

Our lives are like empty hospital rooms.

We get so stuck in the idea that,

oh, it's supposed to be good or bad.

If we're sick then it's cold and it's sterile.

And we just have to live with it like that.

We don't let ourself realize, we don't let ourself see

we can make that hospital room beautiful.

We can make our lives into a piece of art.

We all have the ability, we all have that capability

as human beings to turn these empty hospital rooms,

to turn these lives into something really beautiful.

We look at people who are sick and we pity them.

Because we believe that their sickness means

their life has to be inherently less joyous

than everyone else's.

Life is not gonna stop unfolding itself to you

just because you're sick.

Or just because your life isn't

how you think it's supposed to be.

There's still going to be beauty.

And I can honestly say,

a majority of the happiest moments in my life

have been when I am sick in the hospital, honestly.

And think about the implications of that.

Because I have lived the kind of life

that all of you spend your entire lives running from.

I've been sick and dying my entire life.

And yet, I am so proud of my life.

What does that say?

No really, what does that say about the way

we're all living our lives?

We're waiting to be healthy.

We're waiting to be wealthy.

We're waiting to find our passion.

We're waiting to find our true love

before we actually start living.

Instead of looking at everything that we have,

looking at all the pain, looking at all the sadness,

looking at all the beauty and making something with that.

That's how innovation happens.

Innovation doesn't happen because there's some person

who's in a great circumstance and everything's going well

and they just get on a role

and they make something for the world.

Innovation happens, art happens because of suffering.

And when we clamp down to that suffering,

when we teach people who are sick,

when you teach a little seven year old me

that because I'm sick,

I don't have anything to give to the world,

I don't have anything to create.

So I want to encourage you all,

next time you meet someone who's suffering

and who's in pain, instead of shutting down,

instead of pitying them, why don't you think,

I bet their life is so beautiful.

Really look at them and think,

I bet their life is so complex.

We all get to be a part of this giant human epic story.

We get to part of human history.

We get to add to it.

We have something to give.

And we realize it's what we're creating that matters.

It's what we're adding to this beautiful story that matters.

When we start looking at that, we can change the world.

(soft music)