If you’re looking for someone to help give you a new outlook on how to live your life or someone to inspire you, I can’t help but encourage you to get to know Claire Wineland.
I’ll admit that I’m a little behind on the trend of knowing Claire’s story. But, her touching documentary, What It Feels Like To Die, introduced me to Claire and ultimately changed my perspective on how I hope to live the rest of my life. “Influential” and “inspiring” are just a few words I can use to describe how amazing she is.
Claire was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, a horrible disease, when she was born. Her life has been full of health scares, disappointment, pain and earth-shattering news that continually left her family in shock and hurt. At the age of 13, her lungs collapsed and she fell into a coma, leaving her with a 1% chance of survival. a Despite the lonely, depressing life she may live at the hospital that she’s called home for the last few years, she’s chosen to make the rest of her short life something to be proud of.
Claire’s main goal for the rest of her life is to live a life that makes her happy and proud. She puts a great amount of effort in pursuing happiness and encouraging others to do the same. As she’s said on numerous occasions, “Death is inevitable. But, living a life that we are proud of is something we can control.”
When we think of death, we often fear the unknown, wonder what it’ll be like on the other side or question what we’ll think when we know it’s happening. But Claire won’t. Instead, she’s focusing all her attention on how to keep her body healthy enough to keep going and how to encourage others to have an uplifting mindset, too.
Normally, when you hear the words “She’s dying,” you automatically go “Oh…” in a depressing tone of voice in your head, and you become sad for that individual. However, when you hear Claire’s story, you don’t really feel too depressed because Claire’s mentality and good attitude towards life and death will stun you. It will make you more sad that someone who can deliver such an amazing and educational gift to this world and a positive example, won’t necessarily get the life where she can pursue those dreams and goals for a longer time, the life she deserves to live.
Despite her old soul and undeniable youthfulness, Claire ’s wise beyond her years and has definitely been put on this planet for a purpose: to educate our generation on being genuinely happy. She’s had every reason imaginable to be down in the dumps, but she still chooses not to be. So if Claire doesn’t feel sorry for herself, why should we feel sorry for ourselves? We will probably never go through anything as serious as she will. She has more reason to give up than anyone else, but she never does give up.
In the first 21 years of her life, Claire’s done more things than most ever will in their lives, aside from beating the odds while she was in a coma or living past doctors’ estimates for her lifespan. She created The Clarity Project, a series of YouTube videos where she discusses topics such as death, strength, and other random things that come to her mind, she created a new vlog series on YouTube with the goal to discuss important topics, she, became a TEDx Talks speaker, she has written a book, and she has won several awards for her efforts.
Aside from Claire’s obviously inspiring story, there’s a million reasons why I look up to her and love her. One of the biggest reasons is that she relates to the everyday girl. Her passion is as contagious as her positive energy. She’s as bubbly as they come, with the purest heart and the biggest dreams. You can’t help but fall in love with her drive and energetic personality.
Claire Wineland embodies what it means to be courageous, fearless, and strong, all while being poised, elegant, goofy, refreshing, and immensely inspiring. She has this undeniable light inside of her that just bursts at the seams, and just by watching her, youshe was born with a purpose to live on Earth. She’s proof that you don’t need to wait to be healed when you are aren’t even hurt. You should always be as carefree and focused on the current moment until you get to the next stage in life. You can worry and create a new plan for your life later.
Claire Wineland is the shows you how to live a happy life and create a life you will be proud of at the end of the day. And I hope the world takes the time to get to know her and her story because in just 31 minutes, she completely changed my outlook on life, and I know she has the power to do the same to you, too. If you don’t know who Claire Wineland is, I highly encourage you to learn a few things from her because her impact will leave a lasting impression.
Featured image via Petty Officer 3rd Class Walter Shinn / Public domain
