Kate Bowler, NO CURE FOR BEING HUMAN: (And Other Truths I Need to Hear)

[0:01]Hi, I'm Sivi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast,

[0:05]Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.

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[0:37]Hi, hi, hello.

[0:38]Enjoy the show.

[0:41]If you like this podcast, you will love my new anthology called Moms Don't Have Time to Have Kids.

[0:47]Here's a little snippet by one of the authors from the anthology.

[0:51]Hi, my name is Melissa Schultz, and I'm thrilled to have contributed to Moms Don't Have Time to have kids.

[0:58]My essay is called Sunlight through an angled window, and what I really don't have time for is doing nothing.

[1:05]Still, I try to do a little nothing every day.

[1:09]Kate Buller is the author of No Cure for Being Human, and other truths I need to hear.

[1:14]Kate is in New York Times' best-selling author, host of the podcast Everything Happens and a Duke University Professor.

[1:20]After being unexpectedly diagnosed with stage 4 cancer at age 35, she wrote Everything Happens for a reason,

[1:26]and other lies I've loved, which tells the story of her struggle to understand the personal and intellectual dimensions of the American belief that all tragedies are tests of character.

[1:34]Her latest book, No Cure for Being Human, which is already on the bestseller list,

[1:38]grapples with her diagnosis, her ambition, and her faith as she tries to come to terms with limitations in a culture that says anything is possible.

[1:45]Welcome, Kate.

[1:46]Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to read bugs to discuss no cure for being human and other truths I need to hear.

[1:53]Thanks so much for having me.

[1:55]Oh my gosh, I know I was just telling you this, but your book was so good and I expected nothing less because I had read your previous book and have sort of been following along for a long time, but it even surpassed.

[2:08]I mean, your honesty, how in touch you are with what really matters in the world, that sounds hokey, so it wasn't hokey.

[2:16]And you're writing ability, it's like, all of it combined, it was like, and it wasn't too long, it's like the perfect book.

[2:24]I saw you in through all this, but as a book, it's like a perfect book.

[2:29]That absolutely makes my life. Thank you so much for saying that when I write, I try so hard to like get into a mental space where I'm saying that it's usually either like the hardest thing or the funniest thing that has happened, which usually like hits me in the same way.

[2:45]I want something I usually say out loud to somebody and so it feels really special to have people read it and then to feel kind of really known in that.

[2:54]So thanks so much.

[2:55]Sure.

[2:56]Why don't you explain about like why you decided to write this memoir, how I'm also just so curious as you were going through this, this takes place over the course of your cancer treatment and journey and all of that journey.

[3:09]Okay, I keep saying all these hokey words. I'm sorry. But why in the midst of all that or when during that process did you also decide to put writing a memoir on your plate in addition to everything.

[3:19]Yeah. Well, I, I was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer when I was 35 and that really that just blew up the life that I had before the life I had before was I had so many dreams of being a like a fancy historian and I was going to have a lot of gargoyles.

[3:38]And my presence and like I imagine that'd be sipping port and I really thought like I had a whole life, like a whole to light. I mean, I've seen people retire at 80 something with these glorious intellectual lives and I figured I just had decades to be that person that I'd hope to be.

[3:57]I very suddenly found out that I was not likely to survive the year and that then I had to really try to put together a version of what it would mean to live.

[4:08]First, I was really kind of struck by all the problems of like a crisis where you're like, why, why is this happening. It's so overwhelming. I have this little adorable.

[4:19]I had like like a two year old at the time who was just all smushy and googly eyed and and this husband I had loved since I was 14 and and I the intensity of that moment was really what started me writing in the first place because I realized that I was not equipped.

[4:37]To deal with the fact that I suddenly felt like I was a problem that everyone was trying to explain.

[4:43]And so because I'm a historian who studies cultural scripts like the stories that we tell, especially the spiritual stories that we tell.

[4:50]I just wanted to keep writing because I just as I moved from a crisis to a chronic condition.

[4:56]I realized that the advice never stopped all of a sudden it went from going to why is this happening to you to will just be present or you only live once or make sure to empty that inbox and create that side hustle.

[5:07]And I was like, Oh, no, I will forever be attempted to be solved by green smoothies. So I just kept writing to try to make sense of all the formulas I was being handed.

[5:18]So were you literally writing alongside as everything happened or did you just take notes or did you do it at the end like when did it all happen.

[5:25]Yeah, when something.

[5:28]I actually write a little snippets because well, my life is very surreal.

[5:33]So I tend to have like, you know, I went from this massive you're probably going to die this year to a series of life threatening surgeries and then to a very prolonged sense that every and I still have them every six months I have.

[5:46]a big sort of cliff. I walk up to the edge of in terms of my health. And so, so in the midst of that, I just found that I was either I was going to have to learn how to pivot really fast.

[5:59]Like pivot between a hospital day and then clicking back in and trying to be a mom and also just not being a dink friend where you actually remember people's birthdays and that they do need to talk about that boyfriend.

[6:11]So in the pivoting fast, I found that my life was almost like, you know, it was like little click click click click all those remember the like slide view things when we were a little and every scene was so different.

[6:23]And so I think I was just writing to try to to make sense of how to live in so many different kinds of time like ordinary time and crisis time and just be a normal person that this kids birthday time.

[6:36]That's sort of when then pandemic time, I suppose.

[6:39]And you also just kind of woven with everyone these like light commentaries or histories or you like put it all in context or something like it was all you all you like very subtly kind of like drew back the lens and gave us some context and then like zoomed back in again for a close up, you know, which is also really interesting.

[7:01]And you can tell how great you are like research and everything. I mean, even all the stuff you're saying about digging into all the data.

[7:09]And I mean, basically figuring out your own diagnosis at one point and like I was like I cannot believe she figured this out.

[7:18]That you that there could be such an error that the people could be so rushed that it would really befall it would have to fall on you the patient and your and your giant brain to like decipher all the data.

[7:32]Oh, it is one of the great I think mental.

[7:35]I think it's one of the big burdens of being a patient is you're never sure if you're supposed to be a patient and what the word comes like from like to endure.

[7:44]And just to just to be a person in the waiting room who does puzzles and just tries to get through a really hard day.

[7:50]Or whether you're supposed to toggle to standing up for yourself, trying to learn more about your diagnosis and your treatment.

[7:58]I had such a rare have such a rare medical situation because I have a kind of cancer that normally is reserved for usually old men and a lot of young people are getting cancer now.

[8:09]And also the immunotherapy I took was so I was on a in a clinical trial. And so I really found that I was in this very strange place of sometimes it was just my job to like learn how to take a nap, which I never learned.

[8:23]Or I had to learn how to fight for my life and being Canadian, just to say not prone to using my healthy outdoor voice.

[8:32]It was like a very, very intense time for me to to learn to be the kind of person who who believed I should live in a system that often makes you feel very disposable.

[8:43]Well, you wrote many times about this concept of finitude, right? If that's even how you pronounce it, find it to finish.

[8:51]Yeah, right. We all have to sort of wrestle with that from start to finish that you're all living in this uncomfortable place of life will end. We do know this. And yet we must get out of bed and make the most of it every day.

[9:04]And so how do you reconcile? How do you reconcile that and still figure out how do you allocate your time in the present knowing all of these things without lingering in the past and fast forwarding all the time to plans.

[9:18]And I mean, essentially what you're talking about is like the crux of living, which is why I know cure for being human is like the best title like because it's because you're really saying like how are we supposed to live, whether you have this diagnosis or not.

[9:32]A common affliction. We are all on our way to death at some point. We just can acknowledge it or not acknowledge it. We can know it coming sooner or we don't or it's going to come without us knowing it. But you know, the denial that many people live with doesn't make things any better necessarily. I don't know.

[9:53]Yeah. Yeah, because I mean it's because I just love the word finitude because I just I really just.

[10:00]like thinking about the problem we have of whether things feel like enough.

[10:04]You know, we always want the math of our life to just add up to more and more and more and

[10:07]more. And I think this is like a really intense problem, especially for Americans, she said

[10:13]lovingly, because they're so future obsessed. Like everything is, you know, even if someone's

[10:18]caught in a terrible thing they've done in the past, in those celebrity interviews, it's always

[10:22]my favorite moment where they go, but it made me who I am today. As if like the past is always just

[10:27]inevitable rush into the present. And then from then we're always just supposed to be pouring

[10:32]into our endless, you know, best life now. Tomorrow's a brighter, you know, little orphanage

[10:38]I need tomorrow tomorrow. And the solution to that, of course, is that there is no solution,

[10:44]especially as people who love lots of people. Like as I know as a parent, I felt this so acutely,

[10:51]because at first I was like, oh crap, I'm like, I'm just a ticking bomb. And now I have to count,

[10:58]I have to count my minutes. But that attitude was never going to make me a better mom,

[11:04]a kinder friend, because you really can't transform all of your minutes into moments,

[11:11]like every sitting in traffic isn't going to be like an existential breakthrough for us.

[11:15]Like sometimes we, I think maybe just the wisdom to know the difference between the two

[11:20]is we like, all right, sometimes they're just minutes. And then other time, and other times

[11:25]or moments and moments doesn't mean that we have to be like always carting our kid off to Disneyland

[11:30]or trying to make like pancakes in the shape of a bear, though that is always actually a really

[11:35]good idea. I am not good at making pancakes and shapes. I have tried that. I don't know what

[11:40]I'm doing wrong. I mean, and I'm also afraid to put it like a cookie cutter on the pan,

[11:44]because this isn't a concern. It's a terrible idea. Yeah, it's just like scrapes off the teplon

[11:49]awful idea. So I don't know. I, I lack that. I would like to, I envy the people out there who

[11:56]can make, you know, Mickey, I don't know elaborate thing. Anyway, but Kate, like you're even

[12:03]the way you write. And I have to say I read a lot of this, but I also listened to a couple chapters

[12:07]when my daughter was in the car. And I literally paused it. I was like, did you hear that sentence?

[12:11]Like, did you hear that? She was like, oh, are your sentences even? I mean, hold on, let me just try

[12:17]to find a couple examples, because I dug you and lick every other page here. Let's see. I like

[12:22]this. Okay, today will be as ordinary as yesterday, days and weeks working out the consequences of

[12:26]the moments that came before. We like to imagine that we are starring in an extended morality

[12:30]play where lessons are learned and the hero never dies. But in fact, we must make do with the fact

[12:35]that there will be weddings and funerals again this year. And everyone will still spend most of

[12:39]their evenings watching Netflix. This is a kind of freedom. The only question is how we should

[12:44]live under the burden of it. It's this whole notion of like making things count here. Let me

[12:49]read another one. Let's see. The produce drawer. Oh, that was funny. The produce and your mom

[12:55]like stops traffic to talk about the apple. My mom is always yelling. She's always

[13:02]interrupting like some big moment to be like, girls, girls, girls, girls. There are three kinds

[13:07]of apples. And I just that was absolutely delusional until I can hear it in myself every 30 seconds.

[13:15]Does everyone have what they need? This other scene too, about your mom, you said my mother no matter

[13:21]how grateful she is to good medicine will always see my surgeons as butchers. They cut thick lines

[13:26]at crisscross under my clavicle bisected my stomach and swooped down from my sternum. And when

[13:31]she saw me lying on her couch, my shirt accidentally exposing the puckered seams of my scars,

[13:36]she couldn't help herself. If you don't mind, she said quickly and leaned over and kissed my stomach

[13:40]before I could reply. This is the burden of a mother's love. How it must hover without landing.

[13:49]Oh, mom's. Oh my gosh. Right? I'm sorry. Yeah. I mean, I like it's just so hard to read this

[13:59]and not cry and laugh. And I mean, oh my gosh, your mom. I mean, and your love for your son.

[14:06]And, and even your relationship with your dad, I mean, the dissertation and like the, you know,

[14:13]all his funny jokes and like your two are like obviously just so on the same wavelength about

[14:19]everything. I mean, it's, you know, it's just so funny. You're like two little peas in a pod.

[14:23]It's like the whole thing. It's just amazing. I'm sorry. Right.

[14:29]No, I said my dad's a historian and so then I became a historian and one of the great

[14:36]joys of my life is setting up Zoom for my dad and my son before bed. And I can hear him

[14:42]saying asking the same ridiculous things I used to ask when I was little like, who is the

[14:46]meanest king of England? And the sense that like the beauty of our lives is in, is in the storytelling,

[14:53]it's in all the dumb details and being able to share a story with somebody, which is what love does,

[14:59]which is what history if you're a nerd like me does. I just, that always feels like I'm getting to

[15:04]the, the marrow of it. It's so true. I mean, even like this podcast, I'm like, it isn't about books

[15:10]really. Right. It's about stories. Like that's what everybody needs. Like, that's why I can talk about

[15:17]this like all day, every day. I'm not like that's when people talk about books and people love

[15:22]books and people love reading. It's not that they love like running their eyes across words on a

[15:28]page. It's that we're connecting with each other. And I feel like a book like yours is just like

[15:33]it's just like a shoot a shot of adrenaline, right? Of like, you know, an infusion, if you will,

[15:38]right? Because you're like, oh, you're, and I'm sorry, I don't mean to just be like lavishing

[15:42]praise for no reason, but I was trying it in my head even think like, why is it that this is such

[15:47]an amazing book? What did she do so well? Like aside from your powerful story, but there are lots

[15:52]of stories of people getting sick. And right, but that's not it. It's just that you just so get

[15:57]the world and you write in these scenes. And I don't know. Anyway, I'm like, I'm totally

[16:03]rambling this. I'm going to ponder my little heart. I guess because I, I mean, the feeling I have

[16:09]that I probably had before, but it just sort of burst when I got sick was the feeling of being

[16:19]broken open because my own pain made it impossible for me to just hold on to my more cherished

[16:25]delusions. Like I'm, I'm independent. I can solve most of my own problems. My life is a series

[16:31]of choices. And I'm just going to choose really well. And then when I could barely choose anything,

[16:36]I found I was just trying so hard to say, you know, most of life will be determined by

[16:41]the things we won't choose or or just that the, the more that I felt desperately in love with

[16:48]the world and the more that we all love the harder it gets because it makes it absolutely impossible

[16:54]for it. There ever to be enough. And like that's the, that's the story I wanted to tell because

[16:59]it's the deepest truth. I know, which is this, like I think life only gets harder because if we're

[17:05]doing it right, because it's just dumb love, right? It's just heart exploding, dumb, beautiful love.

[17:13]And I wanted to just kind of be there with everybody else just saying that even though it

[17:18]it's just not the kind of, you know, it's just not the kind of thing that's great at parties.

[17:24]I think this whole concept of, of things counting and all of your, you know, all of the quantifying

[17:32]that you do in the book, right? How many minutes are at labs? How many seconds? How much time? And even

[17:37]how you like refer back to units of measurement and how random that was with like people and acres,

[17:43]like how far your oxen can, I don't even know, right? Like walk across and, you know, just how

[17:49]these random measurements of time become accepted and then become clung onto because what else do

[17:55]we have to hang our hat on other than the second hand and like the units of measurement. And then

[17:59]we are so focused on like distilling it down into little things that we can count that then you

[18:05]miss this broader picture. Yes, that's right. Yes. Yeah. I think especially too when we want universal

[18:13]formulas for universal lives and absolutely nothing about our life really is universal. Like it's

[18:18]only meaningful because you have that one old friend and you remember that one hilarious thing her

[18:24]boyfriend said and then in the moment you understand her humiliation when she fell out of a car by accident

[18:29]and like I just I love the specificity of learning to love people because I mean that that's like

[18:37]the grand drama is that there really is no there's no generic life and it's like this is a weird

[18:44]conclusion I got from reading the I really enjoyed the Mindy Kaling book is everyone hanging out

[18:49]without me and talking about how much she loves her friends and how funny they are and in reading

[18:53]that book I realized I didn't want her friends that there was just truly going to be nothing ever

[18:58]better than the friends I already because it's all the details and like how wonderful to be

[19:05]so stuck in our stories that we can't be pulled out of them not for any dumb self-help book not ever

[19:12]but you also you talk about your friends a lot I mean they're like central characters and

[19:17]I mean you're obviously a good friend like you like check you're checking you're doing all the

[19:21]things still like no matter what well I wish there were more books on friendship because I think

[19:26]once I knew I was like a kind of like a structurally unsound building you know like I was just

[19:32]gonna like a like the window would fall off and like the foundation would crack I have been very

[19:39]I've just been a strong this is my like deep desire for everyone to accept interdependence

[19:44]instead of this American hyper individualism but like I picture friends as being like when in the

[19:50]medieval era they realized they wanted to build buildings taller and they're like gosh we really

[19:54]could get this above three floors let's start against seven and it only works if you have external

[19:59]scaffold

[20:00]And I love. So like the flying buttresses that come off of Cathedral. So I always thought, oh, what a great.

[20:05]That is exactly what my friends are. So that's who I dedicated the book to is my two best friends who I call my flying buttresses, which is like not a very not like it doesn't write. It just doesn't roll off the tongue. Also, I forgot to tell them I dedicate

[20:18]and there was a lot of just a lot of confusion and crying when I handed. I was like, Oh, here, my bubble. I wrote this book.

[20:26]So what is it like now that the book is out? Like how is that affecting your day to day life?

[20:33]Because I'm an academic, I think it makes me so excited that I finally get to have all the arguments I want to have.

[20:39]And I really want to have a lot of arguments. I want to have an argument about how the genre of self help is convincing people, especially women that they should be indestructible side hustle relationship conquering monsters who do everything on their own.

[20:55]I love to complain about self help. I love to complain about the problems of American individualism.

[21:04]I love just talking about the nature of hope and how hope is different than optimism. So I think the fact I get to have all these arguments, honestly, just it's, it's, it's the rules me because I,

[21:18]I care so much about the consequence of these ideas for all of us. So if it can be anything I want it to be not about my story that about the story we all need, which is that we were never going to be able to do this alone.

[21:32]I love that. And so now from a health perspective now that I feel like, you know, I deserve to know all the intimate issues.

[21:42]So what are we doing now? Are we waiting for the next scan? Is that where we are? Yes. Yeah. That's where we are. Yeah, I'm kind of on the, like if there's like a health super high way. I'm sort of on the like the bumpy adjacent road.

[21:57]Yeah, I'm on the surface row.

[22:01]Exactly. I am on the surface. That's a perfect. Thank you. I'll remember that. Yes, I'm on the service road. So things are always there. I mean, there's so much better than before, but I think for me cancer like life will just kind of remain a chronic condition.

[22:17]Wow. And what I know you're so anti bucket list and within all of that is good. And I know you don't want to plan too much and you know distracted. So I hate, I hesitate to do an ask like what's next, but like when you look even just in the next week or like the next month or the next few minutes, like what are you most looking forward to.

[22:39]Yeah, because I think I, yeah, I'm very anti bucket list because, you know, I do think it is just our endless sense of trying to finish our lives, but I love dreaming. And I think it's, it's such a beautiful thing to even let ourselves dream.

[22:52]And my dreams are usually really weird. Well, I, I really like to write. I really like to read another book. Yeah, I want to write essays about

[23:02]like lately I was just so mad about how people using the term manifesting. So I'd like to write something like that. I wrote a little devotional book that'll come out in February called good enough. So it's trying to think about like, you know, what could we, what could we reach for instead of perfect.

[23:15]And I was like, good enough. So that made me laugh.

[23:19]I, I'd really like to go out my camper with my husband and son and I'm like, see some ridiculous things like worlds largest golf ball kinds of stuff.

[23:29]So I think that would make just accommodating to this limited the limited horizon of both health and the pandemic means I'd like to create some lovely joys that are about three to six months out of reach.

[23:43]The camper does not sound like a joy to me, but my little as guy asks me all the time. Can we go on a camper trip. I don't know. He must have seen it on YouTube or something. And I'm kind of like,

[23:56]no, no, we do have other dreams. Yeah, pick up a New Yorker who will be like, you know, where's my iPad after five minutes in the camper.

[24:07]I'm sure you would have an overall long trip.

[24:10]That's awesome in your travels. What advice would you have to aspiring authors?

[24:17]Oh, yeah. I think there is, I think I only started writing when I gave up the maybe the pride that I had that I had to be good. I just realized it was okay to try.

[24:29]It was okay to experiment with something that I knew how to do without maybe trying to imitate anyone else.

[24:37]So one thing I practice doing is I just wrote a funny little stories and I send them to a friend.

[24:43]And I found those little paragraphs really gave me a lot of confidence to like write them into bigger, maybe more layered stories. So yeah, that's usually what I do if I either feel stuck or I'm not sure how to begin.

[24:54]Is I write things that strike me as either wonderful or ridiculous. And I text them in a few paragraphs to a friend and I find that's usually like the beginning of something kind of good.

[25:04]Awesome. I love that. Yeah, I feel like Instagram is like, you know, you're writing, you know, just write something funny like right.

[25:12]Get on there totally. Like mind the mind the moments that. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Okay. Thank you for this book. Thank you for sharing the pain that you went through in so many ways.

[25:25]And the personal like just thanks for opening up your door and letting us all in and like I feel like, you know, we got to sort of like a little.

[25:34]Flying.

[25:36]I love for a better expression than fly on the wall, but you know, I mean, it's like watching a really sad but uplifting movie where you're just like so rooting for the main character and you're like don't talk to me while I watch the end of this movie.

[25:54]I have to see what happens and then you like kind of cry when it's over because of her knee of it, but also, you know, because of what happened. I don't know. It makes this feel that's the best thing a book and do is like make you really feel so.

[26:08]Yeah.

[26:09]Wow. Thank you for thank you for rooting for me. I am totally rooting for you and yeah. Good luck with everything.

[26:19]Right for mom's no time to write if you ever have extra essays floating around. I have like a whole medium site. So that sounds great. Thanks.

[26:27]All right. A beautiful time. All right. Have a great day.

[26:30]You too. I'll think of you while camping when it's a bad idea. What it breaks down. I'll think of you while camping and if you want to trade kids, you know.

[26:38]Yeah.

[26:39]Okay.

[26:40]Take care. Bye.

[26:42]Thanks for listening to this episode of mom's don't have time to read books.

[26:46]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at mom's don't have time to read books.

[26:51]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on zoom every other week.

[26:58]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact texture sound for the sound editing.

[27:02]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outroom music.