Top highlights from No Cure for Being Human
I did not understand that one future comes at the exclusion of all others.Everybody pretends that you die only once. But thats not true. You can die a thousand possible futures in the course of a single, stupid life.
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...I had nothing to do but survive the feeling that some pain is for no reason at all. It became clearer than ever that life is not a series of choices. So often the experiences that define us are the ones that we didn't pick. Cancer. Betrayal. Miscarriage. Job loss. Mental illness. A novel coronavirus.
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Everybody pretends that you only die once. But thats not true. You can die to a thousand possible futures in the course of a single, stupid life.
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All of our masterpieces, ridiculous. All of our striving, unnecessary. All of our work, unfinished, unfinishable. We do too much, never enough, and are done before weve even started. Its better this way.
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And I didn't know how to say the future was like a language I couldn't speak anymore.
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Our lives are not problems to be solved. We can have meaning and beauty and love, but nothing even close to resolution.
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So often we are defined by the troubles that we live with rather than the things we conquer. Any persistent suffering requires being afraid. But who can stay awake to fear for so long?
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People say carpe diem. I mean, yes, unless you need a nap.
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Its easy to imagine letting go when we forget that choices are luxuries, allowing us to maintain our illusion of control. But until those choices are plucked from our handssomeone dies, someone leaves, something breakswe are only playing at surrender.
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It never occurred to me that every life must be constantly reinvented by adventures and private jokes, and that it might, suddenly, end.
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I have another scan this week," I say lightly, hoping to reassure my loved ones that it is safe to rejoin my orbit. There is always another scan, because this is my reality. But the people I know are often busy contending with mildly painful ambition and the possibility of reward. I try to begrudge them nothing, except I'm not alongside them anymore.In the meantime, I have been hunkering down with old medical supplies and swelling resentment. I tried haven't I tried? to avoid fights and remember birthdays. I showed up for dance recitals and listened to weight-loss dreams and kept the granularity of my medical treatments in soft focus. A person like that would be easier to love, I reasoned.I try a small experiment and stop calling my regular rotation of friends and family, hoping that they will call me back on their own. _This is not a test. This is not a test._ The phone goes quiet, except for a handful of calls. I feel heavy with strange new grief. Is it bitter or unkind to want everyone to remember what I can't forget? Who wants to be confronted with the reality that we are all a breath away from a problem that could alter our lives completely? A friend with a very sick child said it best: I'm everyone's inspiration and and no one's friend.I am asked all the time to say that, given what I've gained in perspective, I would never go back. Who would want to know the truth? Before was better.
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A bucket list disguises a dark question as a challenge: what do you want to do before you die? We all want, in the words of Henry David Thoreau, to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. But do we attain that by listing everything weve ever wanted to do? Should we really focus on how many moments we can collect?
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To many people, I am no longer just myself. I am a reminder of a thought that is difficult for the rational brain to accept: our bodies might fail at any moment.
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No matter the temperature, I insist that all impossible decisions must be made outside under the uninterrupted sky. How else could you know you're still alive?
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Sometimes the body is a weight pulling you the way down. And it's hard to love the stone that drowns you.
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Time really is a circle; I can see that now. We are trapped between a past we can't return to and a future that is uncertain.
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Before the baby, before the diagnosis, before the pandemic. Before. Before when I was earnest and clever and ignorant, I thought, life is a series of choices. I curated my own life until, one day, I couldn't. I had accepted the burden of limitless choices only to find out I had few to make.
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If you want progress, take up running. If you want meaning, run a church.
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But the truth is somewhere inside of me: there is no formula. We live and we are loved and we are gone. Tumors budded and spread across my colon and liver without my consent, and here I am.
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But no matter how carefully we schedule our days, master our emotions, and try to wring our best life now from our better selves, we cannot solve the problem of finitude. We will always want more. We need more. We are carrying the weight of caregiving and addiction, chronic pain and uncertain diagnosis, struggling teenagers and kids with learning disabilities, mental illness and abusive relationships.
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The great triumph of the "best life now" paradigm was that it summarized the promises of an entire American wellness industry: everything is possible if you only believe. You can find this confident message everywhere from megachurches to Burning Man. It's expressed in the advertising around Peloton bikes and deluxe yoga retreats. Good vibes are big business.
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The problem with aspirational lists, of course, is that they often skip the point entirely. Instead of helping us grapple with our finitude, they have approximated infinity. With unlimited time and resources, we could do anything, be anyone. We could become more adventurous by jumping out of airplanes, more traveled by visiting every continent, or more cultured by reading the most famous books of all time. With the right list, we would never starve with the hunger of want. But it is much easier to count items than to know what counts.
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We live and we are loved and we are gone.
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We are grass, murmur the scriptures. Our crowns are just flowers. We are here and then gone in a burst of wind.
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I look around me and think, there are the choices I've made. The people I've loved. No matter how fleeting this was, I need them to believe everything mattered. This life was enough.But it's not true, of course.Nothing will add up to enough. I wish someone has told me that the end of a life is a complex equation. Years dwindle into months, months into days, and you must count them. All my dreams and bedtimes with a boy in dinosaur pajamas must be squeezed into hours, minutes, seconds.How should I spend them?
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Everybody pretends that you only die once. But that's not true. You can die a thousand possible futures in the course of a single, stupid life.
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It is a strange fact that sometimes the people who love you most will be among the first to stop worrying about you.
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It is a mystery to me why some mere minutes transform into moments, hovering outside of time. And how they ebb and flow, stirring wonder and the ache for more. I know the love of a God who is beyond all wanting, but the more I live, the more I want and want and want.
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But no matter how carefully we schedule our days, master our emotions, and try to wring our best life now from our better selves, we cannot solve the problem of finitude. We will always want more. We need more. We are carrying the weight of caregiving and addiction, chronic pain and uncertain diagnosis, struggling teenagers and kids with learning disabilities, mental illness and abusive relationships. All of us struggle against the constraints places on our bodies, our commitments, our ambitions...
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I must accept the world as it is, or break against the truth of it: my life is made of paper walls. And so is everyone else's.
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This will be a hard journey, he says. Is there anything you can set down?
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takes great courage to live. Period. There are fears and disappointments and failures every day, and, in the end, the hero dies. It must be cinematic to watch us from above.
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that now. We are trapped between a past we cant return to and a future that is uncertain. And it takes guts to live here, in the hard space between
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Time really is a circle; I can see that now. We are trapped between a past we cant return to and a future that is uncertain. And it takes guts to live here, in the hard space between anticipation and realization
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It is a strange fact that sometimes the people who love you most will be among the first to stop worrying about you. An inflexible optimism stands as a barrier between you. You will be fine. Anything to the contrary seems too difficult to communicate.
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In my finite life, the mundane has begun to sparkle. The things I lovethe things I should lovebecome clearer, brighter.
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Who wants to be confronted with the reality that we are all a breath away from a problem that could alter our lives completely? A friend with a very sick child said it best: I'm everyone's inspiration and no one's friend.
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But tge truth is somewhere inside of me: there is no formula. We live and we are loved and we are gone. Tumors budded and spread across my colon and liver without my consent, and here I am.
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Based on the information we have about people with Stage Four colon cancer, the survival rate is fourteen percent," he said and began to scan the room as if looking for a window to climb out of.
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Do people age into acceptance? Is this personality or maturity or a natural realism? Had he already accomplished what he wanted to do? Did he see his kids get married, reach an anniversary, or hit a milestone? What amounted to enough?
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Yes! Thank you. I need you to know that these books are not suitable to be sold in a hospital. " I point to a pile of Christian bestsellers I've made on the floor, books that I had carefully studied and documented in a comprehensive history of the movement known as the prosperity gospel.
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He's writing about the 'prosperity gospel.' He's saying God will reward you with money and health if you have the right kind of faith. Joel Osteen is America's most famous prosperity preacher.
Kate bowler,
No Cure for Being Human: And Other Truths I Need to Hear
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Time is not an arrow anymore, and heaven is not tomorrow. It's here, for a second, when I could drown in the beauty of what I have but also what may never be.
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Time really is a circle; I can see that now. We are trapped between a past we can't return to and a future that is uncertain. And it takes guts to live here, in the hard space between anticipation and realization. How quickly we believe that nothing can be new again but then, look. Another Leonard Cohen song is being sung. Hallelujah.
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no one in a hospital sleeps in the conventional sense. There are only intervals of sleep without rest, interrupted by unfamiliar voices. Whats your date of birth? On a scale from one to ten, how would you rate your pain? To this day, if you wake me up from a nap, I will immediately tell you my birthday.
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I feel a spark of horror each time I remember it: we come undone.
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Nothing will exempt me from the pain of being human.
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All of our masterpieces, ridiculous. All of our striving, unnecessary. All of our work, unfinished, unfinishable. We do too much, never enough, and are done before we've even started.It's better this way.
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Sorry," I continue, "I'm not trying to be a jerk. But everyone seems to be proceeding under the assumption that their luck is guaranteed once they hit... I don't know middle class? No one seems to understand that everyone's life hangs by a thread.
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Money for treatment. My parents and siblings are taking out loans against their homes now and setting retirement ideas aside to help cover what insurance denies.
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The virtues of mass production are seductive. Speed. Productivity. Growth. But the labor my students are preparing for is slow and inefficient. Most of the week will be spent trying to offer kindness to a deacon who never liked you, or weeding heresies out of the Sunday school material you bought online. You'll spend days coming up with enough beauty and truth to fill an hour on Sunday only to receive a dozen comments from parishioners about how much they miss the old pastor on their way out the door. If you want progress, take up running. If you want meaning, run a church.
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But the truth is somewhere inside of me: there is no formula. We live and we are loved and we are gone.
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We are reminded why the title pastor comes from the word shepherd, because most of Christian ministry will be spent attending to everyday life. My students at the divinity school sign up for the grand cause of joining God in bringing heaven to earth but mostly find themselves fiddling with the sanctuary sound system and trying to get what's-her-face off the church council.
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This will be a hard journey," he says. "Is there anything you can set down?
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We worship at the altar of plenty. ... we cling to stories of more-than-enoughness believing the future is full to the brim for all of us.
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The problem with aspirational lists, of course, is that they often skip the point entirely. Instead of helping us grapple with our finitude, they have approximated infinity.
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To so many people, I am no longer just myself. I am a reminder of a thought that is difficult for the rational brain to accept: our bodies might fail at any moment.
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The terrible gift of a terrible illness is that it has, in fact, taught me to live in the moment. Nothing but this day matters: the warmth of this crib, the sound of his hysterical giggling. And when I look closely at my life, I realize that I'm not just learning to seize the day. In my finite life, the mundane has begun to sparkle. The things I love - the things I should love - become clearer, brighter.
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So often we are defined by the troubles we live with, rather than the things we conquer.
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We are a culture racing toward better tomorrows, but suffering is the slow work of attrition. First it costs you casual friends and small talk, then retirement plans and the thrill of being cajoled into new projects.
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