The things we already know
If you love this content (please share it), but also check out my Podcast & connect with me on YouTube / Twitter.
We turn your favorite newsletters into podcasts at 10minmindset.org
Eric Dane’s last words didn’t teach me anything new. That’s what made them hit so hard.
Eric Dane died yesterday. He was 53.
If you watched Grey’s Anatomy, you knew him as McSteamy. If you watched Euphoria, you knew him as Cal Jacobs. But the last thing he filmed wasn’t a scene for either show. It was a message to his daughters.
Netflix released it today as part of their Famous Last Words series. The format is simple. A person who knows they’re dying sits down with an interviewer, talks about their life, and then the interviewer leaves the room. The camera stays on. And the person says whatever they need to say — knowing it’ll only air after they’re gone.
Dane was diagnosed with ALS in April of last year. Ten months later, he’s gone.
When Brad Falchuk left the stage and Dane looked into the camera alone, he started with this: “Billie and Georgia, these words are for you. I tried. I stumbled sometimes, but I tried. Overall, we had a blast, didn’t we?”
Then he gave them four pieces of advice.
Live in the present. Fall in love with something. Choose your friends wisely. Fight until your last breath.
I’ve been sitting with that list all morning. And what I keep coming back to isn’t how profound it is. It’s how ordinary it is.
The Clarity Gap
Here’s what I think is actually happening when someone’s final words level us.
We hear them and think: I already knew that. And then, a half-second later: So why am I not living like it?
That gap between what we know and how we behave is something I’ve started calling The Clarity Gap. And I think it explains more about human suffering than almost anything else I’ve come across.
Bronnie Ware spent eight years working in palliative care in Australia. She eventually published the five most common regrets she heard from people in their final weeks. They’ve been translated into 32 languages and read by millions. Here they are:
I wish I’d lived a life true to myself. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings. I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends. I wish I’d let myself be happier.
Read that list and tell me a single one surprises you. You can’t. Because you already know all of it. I already know all of it. We’ve known it since we were old enough to understand what a life is.
The problem was never information.
What Dane actually said
I want to stay with his four lessons for a minute, because I think the details matter more than the headlines.
On presence, he said something that stopped me: “For years I would wander off mentally, lost in my head for long chunks of time. Wallowing in worry and self-pity, shame and doubt. I replayed decisions, second-guessed myself. I should’ve done this, I never should’ve done that.”
Then he said: “Out of pure survival, I am forced to stay in the present. But I don’t want to be anywhere else.”
I think about that. He needed a terminal diagnosis to stop rehearsing conversations that already happened and pre-worrying about ones that haven’t. And his response wasn’t bitterness. It was something closer to relief. Like the disease took something terrible from him — his body — and accidentally gave him something back.
On finding your thing, he told his girls he fell in love with acting when he was about their age. That it got him through his darkest hours. Then this: “My work doesn’t define me, but it excites me.”
Six words that would save a lot of people a lot of therapy. Your work doesn’t have to be your identity. It just has to be something that makes you want to show up tomorrow. (I think most people confuse those two things and then wonder why success feels hollow.)
On friendship, he described how ALS stripped away everything he used to do with his people. No driving around town, no gym, no grabbing coffee. So his friends adapted. They come to him. They eat together, watch a game, listen to music. And then he landed on this: “They don’t do anything special. They just show up. That’s a big one. Just show up.”
I’ve been thinking about who in my life just shows up. And whether I’m that person for anyone else.
Why this advice only lands when someone’s dying
There’s something deeply strange about the fact that “live in the present” hits differently when a dying man says it than when a wellness influencer posts it on Instagram.
The words are identical. The impact is completely different.
I think it’s because of what’s underneath. When Dane says “live in the present,” he’s not performing mindfulness. He’s confessing. He’s telling his daughters that he wasted years inside his own head and only stopped because his body forced him to. There’s loss in that sentence. Regret. And a weird, hard-won gratitude that he figured it out at all.
That’s what’s missing from most advice. The cost.
When someone tells you to “be present” from a meditation retreat, there’s no weight behind it. When someone tells you from a wheelchair, knowing they’ll never walk their daughters down the aisle, the same words become something else entirely.
I think the lesson isn’t to wait for that weight. It’s to take the advice seriously before life makes you.
The uncomfortable math
Let me make this concrete for a second.
Dane was 53. Diagnosed at 52. If you’d asked him at 50 whether he was living well, he probably would’ve said yes. He was working on Euphoria. He had his girls. Things were good.
Then two years later he’s filming his last words.
I don’t say that to be morbid. I say it because I catch myself doing this thing where I treat the important stuff as something I’ll get to eventually. I’ll be more present next year. I’ll reach out to that old friend when things calm down. I’ll find the thing that excites me after I finish the thing that pays me.
We treat the Clarity Gap like it’s a scheduling problem. Like we just haven’t gotten around to living the way we already know we should.
But time doesn’t send a warning shot. Dane went from set to wheelchair in less than a year.
I read somewhere that the average person spends 47% of their waking hours thinking about something other than what they’re currently doing. Forty-seven percent. That means if you live to 80, you spend roughly 37 years mentally somewhere else. Not here. Not now. In a replay of yesterday or a rehearsal of tomorrow.
Dane said he replayed decisions and second-guessed himself for years. Most of us are doing the same thing right now. We’re just not calling it what it is.
What I’m taking from this
I’m not going to pretend I watched that Netflix special and immediately transformed into a person who savors every moment. That’s not how it works. You get punched in the chest by something like this, carry it around for a day or two, and then your phone buzzes and you’re back to worrying about something that won’t matter in six months.
But I did do one thing this morning. I texted a friend I haven’t talked to in a while. Nothing deep. Just “thinking about you.” Three words. Took four seconds.
Dane’s whole point about friendship was that the grand gesture isn’t the thing. Showing up is the thing. And sometimes showing up is just a text that says I see you and you matter to me.
I also asked myself a question I’m going to leave with you, because it’s been rattling around in my head all day and I think it might rattle around in yours:
If you already know what matters — and you do — what are you waiting for?
Not what are you waiting to do. What are you waiting for? What condition has to be met before you start living like the person you’d want to be in your last conversation?
Because Dane’s four lessons weren’t new. Be present. Love something. Keep your people close. Keep fighting. You knew all of that before you opened this email.
The Clarity Gap isn’t a knowledge problem.
It’s a courage problem.
Thank you for reading,
— Scott
My Links