In No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear), Duke historian and stage 4 colon cancer survivor Kate Bowler has written a remarkable book that can help us steer our way through the difficult seas of life.
These are difficult times, as we all try to cope with our COVID-19 world. In No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear), Duke historian and stage 4 colon cancer survivor Kate Bowler has written a remarkable book that can help us steer our way through the difficult seas of life. This is Bowler’s second memoir, and in it she reflects with searing honesty and comic sensibilities on the new realities imposed on her by her illness. In just over 200 pages, Bowler launches a humorous yet stinging attack on what might be called the toxic positivity industrial complex. The scene where Bowler wanders down to the hospital gift shop in her medical gown and demands that they remove all the books that guarantee you can pray or will yourself back to health is truly worth the price of admission.
While Bowler rejects platitudes that assure us that everything will be just fine, she does not give into pessimism nor lose touch with her strong Christian faith. Bowler has the unique appreciation for both the suffering and joy that life brings. The overall question that Bowler asks herself—and us—is: how will we measure our life? Will we check off all the items on our bucket list? Bowler reminds us that all our lives, because of the very definition of life itself, will be unfinished. There are things that we will just not get to do. We will have regrets.
Our lives will be unfinished no matter how much we accomplish. Somehow, all of this will be OK because, as Bowler puts it, “Life is so beautiful. Life is so terrible.”
Tufts Now 2021 Winter Book Recommendations.
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