医生说他活不到十三岁。这个患早衰症的比利时博主，活到了二十八岁。

First, who this man was.

His name was Michiel Vandeweert. He was Belgian, and he filmed his daily life online.

He had an illness called progeria.

The name says exactly what it is: a person’s body grows old far faster than everyone else’s.

It is a very rare genetic illness.

You cannot tell when the child is born; at around two years old, the body starts to age.

Other children are growing up; his body was heading the other way.

To this day there is still no drug for it, and no cure.

The medical average is this: children with this illness live to about fifteen.

Note that this is an average.

It is what you get by adding up a great many children’s ages and dividing once.

It describes a group of people, not the one in front of you.

When Michiel was very small, a doctor examined him and gave the family a more specific number.

The doctor said: he will probably only reach twelve.

Twelve.

Note that the doctor said twelve, not fifteen.

A small child, not yet finished with school, and someone had already worked out the length of his whole life.

But that number turned out to be wrong.

Michiel reached twelve, and he was still here.

Eighteen, still here.

Twenty-five, still here.

Later, he walked all the way to twenty-eight.

Among everyone in the world still living with this illness, he was one of the oldest.

The doctor said twelve. He walked himself to twenty-eight.

So what did he do with those extra sixteen years?

He started a channel online and filmed videos every day, almost without a break.

And what he filmed was not his illness.

He filmed what he ate today, where he went today, who came to see him today, what the weather was like.

Just an utterly ordinary day, and then another one.

He did not point the camera at his own body, and he did not spend every day talking about how much time he had left.

What he talked about was what he had done that day.

So the people who followed him were watching one person’s days.

A lot of people followed him, for years.

This week, Belgian television reported that Michiel had died.

Twenty-eight.

One last thing.

That number the doctor gave is an average worked out from a great many people.

It describes a group, not any one person.

Michiel never argued with that number, and he did not carry it around on his lips either.

He simply got up every day, and then lived another day, and kept doing that for sixteen years.

Think about it: someone tells you this is as far as you go.

Is that a result, or is it only a number?