He was writing about riding a bicycle in the dark — how hard it is to keep your balance, to see the obstacles coming, when you can’t see the road at all.
And then he made the turn I didn’t see coming: avoiding the conversations that make us uncomfortable is its own kind of riding blind. We’re pedaling, sure. We’re just not going anywhere we can see.
For me, it was his closing line that was the kind of simple that sticks:
“Talk about it. Turn on the lights.”
I’ve been saying some version of this for years, just with less style.
Most people I sit with — as an end-of-life navigator, as someone who has watched a lot of families find out too late what a person actually wanted — aren’t avoiding these conversations because they don’t care.
They’re avoiding them because nobody ever showed them where the light switch was.
You don’t have to have the whole road mapped out. You just have to stop pedaling in the dark.
This is exactly what Start the Conversation is for.
It’s one hour. One Thursday. A guided, low-pressure space to say the things you’ve been meaning to say — about who decides, what matters, what you want — before you’re saying them in a hallway outside an ICU.
📅 Thursday, July 23 | 12 Noon–1p ET
$69 individual · $120 family seat (bring someone you’d want in the room)
Turn on the lights. I’ll hold the space while you do.
No transition navigated alone. Not even this one.
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