There’s a simple way to find out what you actually value: notice how you’d feel losing it. “We hate losing what we love, and love losing what we hate; by this, we know what we hold dear and what is of little value to us.”

Innocent turns that into a test you can run on anything. Flirt with the idea of losing it and the truth surfaces — dread means it matters, relief means it doesn’t. It works even on life itself: you know you love yours when mortality is a fact you can embrace and still hate.

The things that pass the test are the ones you protect, pour time into, and can’t picture living without. For him that’s his work — a passion he’d not only live for but, he says, be willing to die for.