Olivia: You know that phrase, "Everything happens for a reason"? Jackson: Oh yeah. The ultimate go-to when something terrible happens and nobody knows what to say. It’s the conversational equivalent of a sympathy card with a picture of a sunset. Olivia: Well, today's author would call that one of the great 'lies she's loved.' And she has the receipts to prove it, written in the ink of her own medical charts. Jackson: I'm intrigued. That’s a bold claim to make. Who are we talking about? Olivia: We are diving into the brilliant, witty, and heartbreakingly honest memoir, No Cure for Being Human by Kate Bowler. Jackson: Ah, Kate Bowler. Isn't she the academic who was an expert on the prosperity gospel—the whole 'believe and be healthy and wealthy' thing—and then, in a twist of cosmic irony, got diagnosed with Stage IV cancer at 35? Olivia: Exactly. And that collision of expertise and experience is what makes this book so powerful. It's not just a memoir; it's a cultural critique from someone on the front lines. It’s been widely acclaimed for its raw honesty, and it really serves as this necessary, witty counter-narrative to a culture just saturated with self-help clichés and toxic positivity. Jackson: So she’s basically the world’s most qualified person to call nonsense on the whole ‘just think positive’ industry. Olivia: You could say that. And her battle against those easy answers started almost immediately. There's this incredible scene right after her diagnosis that perfectly sets the stage for everything she wants to say.

Jackson: Okay, you have to tell me. Where does this battle begin? Olivia: It begins, of all places, in the hospital gift shop. Picture this: Kate is just a few days out from major surgery. She’s in a flimsy blue cotton gown, wheeling her IV pole, which she has nicknamed “R2-D2.” She’s just trying to feel human again by taking a walk. Jackson: A classic hospital escape attempt. I’ve been there. You’re just desperate for a change of scenery from beige walls. Olivia: Precisely. So she wheels herself into the gift shop, and what does she see? A huge display of books promising health, wealth, and happiness. Specifically, Joel Osteen’s Your Best Life Now. Jackson: Oh no. That’s like finding a steakhouse menu in a vegan cafe. Just completely the wrong message for the wrong audience. Olivia: It’s worse. For Kate, as a scholar of this stuff, it’s a direct insult. These books aren't just optimistic; they often carry a dark undertone. The core message is that your circumstances are a direct reflection of your faith and your attitude. So if you're sick, or poor, or struggling... well, you must not be believing hard enough. Jackson: Wow. So in a hospital, a place literally filled with suffering people, that book is essentially telling them, "This is your fault." Olivia: That’s exactly how she sees it. So, fueled by what she calls "steroid-induced rage," she starts pulling every copy off the shelf. She stacks them on the floor and demands to see the manager. Jackson: I love this. This is the energy I want to bring to my next customer service complaint. What happens? Olivia: A terrified teenage employee gets the manager, a woman named Brenda. And Kate, standing there with her IV pole, launches into a full-blown academic lecture. She tells Brenda, "These books are a lie. They are telling sick people that they are to blame." She points out specific books that literally claim people can cause their own diseases through negative thinking. Jackson: That takes such incredible guts. To do that in such a vulnerable state. How did the manager react? Olivia: Brenda, to her credit, listened. She let Kate point out all the problematic books. And the story has this perfect, slightly absurd ending. The next time Kate wheels past the gift shop, all the copies of Your Best Life Now are gone. Jackson: Yes! A small victory for humanity. Olivia: But they’ve been replaced by Joel Osteen’s new book, You Can, You Will. Jackson: Oh, come on! That’s hilarious and depressing at the same time. It’s like they learned a very, very specific lesson, and nothing more. Olivia: It’s the perfect metaphor for the whole problem, isn't it? The machine that produces these simple, shiny answers is relentless. But what’s so bad about those books, really? Aren't they just trying to give people hope? Olivia: That’s the question Bowler forces us to ask. And her answer is that it’s a false hope built on a foundation of blame. It creates a world where, as she says, "it is not safe for people in pain." Because if the formula is "positivity + faith = good life," then anyone with a bad life is a walking failure. It isolates people in their suffering by making it a personal, moral failing instead of a shared, human reality. Jackson: That makes so much sense. It shifts the blame onto the victim. And it seems like that whole mindset is tied to this idea of control, of optimizing your life... which must feel absolutely insane when you lose all control. How did that change her view of, say, time and ambition? Olivia: Oh, it completely shatters it. And that’s the second huge truth she uncovers. Our entire modern relationship with time is built on a fantasy.

Jackson: A fantasy? What do you mean? I feel like my relationship with time is mostly just anxiety about my calendar. Olivia: Well, before her diagnosis, Bowler was the queen of productivity. She tells this story about how her parents went away on a trip, and she, as a teenager, decided to "streamline" their lives by renovating their entire basement without their permission. Jackson: Wait, what? Like, she painted and redecorated their basement? Olivia: Painted the wood paneling, reorganized their entire record collection, and even got rid of a treadmill because it didn't fit her new, more efficient floor plan. She says she has a lifelong tendency to be "both considerate and wildly presumptuous." Jackson: I think my mom would have used a different word than "presumptuous." But I get the picture. She's a doer. An optimizer. Olivia: To the extreme. There's an even better story. One morning, she woke up with a cold and accidentally took a nighttime decongestant instead of a non-drowsy one. She realized she was going to be sleepy all day and wouldn't get any work done. Jackson: Okay, that’s annoying, but you just write off the day. Olivia: Not Kate Bowler. Her husband, Toban, finds her in the bathroom, sobbing over the toilet, desperately trying to make herself throw up the pills. And when he asks her what on earth she's doing, she wails that she has too much work to do. And he just looks at her and says, "Well, it looks like the real victim here is efficiency." Jackson: That’s basically the mantra of Silicon Valley, right? "The real victim here is efficiency." It's funny but also... deeply unsettling. Because that drive is so relatable. Olivia: It is! We're all taught to measure our lives in accomplishments, in things checked off a list. Which is why the concept of a "bucket list" becomes so strange to her after her diagnosis. Counselors and friends keep telling her to make one. Jackson: Right, the standard advice. Go see the pyramids, swim with dolphins. Olivia: But she starts to question the whole premise. She says, "A bucket list disguises a dark question as a challenge: what do you want to do before you die?" It turns life into a scavenger hunt. And she comes to this profound realization: "it is much easier to count items than to know what counts." Jackson: That line hits hard. It’s so true. It’s easier to count countries visited than to measure the quality of the time you spent there. So if a bucket list is just, as you put it, 'experiential capitalism,' what's the alternative? Just sit and wait? Olivia: It’s not about waiting, but about changing your currency. The currency is no longer productivity or new experiences. It’s presence. It’s connection. It’s acknowledging the beauty and the terror of the moment you’re in, without needing it to be a highlight for your life’s resume. She talks about the shift from a life of limitless choices to realizing she had very few. She says, "I was stuck in this body, this house, this life." And in that "stuckness," she has to find a new way to live. Jackson: That’s a radical shift. It’s moving from a mindset of "doing" to a mindset of "being." But that’s so hard. Our culture has no script for that. We don't know how to talk about chronic pain, or unresolved problems, or lives that don't follow a neat upward trajectory. Olivia: We don't. We want a cure. We want a solution. And Bowler's ultimate conclusion is that there isn't one. And this leads to the most beautiful, central metaphor of the book, which is her answer to this whole dilemma of living an imperfect, unresolved life.

Jackson: Okay, so if there's no cure, no five-step plan, what's the answer? Olivia: The answer is a story. Years ago, she was on a trip to Portugal with her family. They visited the Batalha Monastery, a stunning, ornate 14th-century cathedral. As they were exploring, her father, a historian, was marveling at all the finished, perfect details. Jackson: As a historian would. Appreciating the craftsmanship. Olivia: But then they meet this little old man who is a guide, and he’s not excited about the finished parts. He pulls them toward the back, to a section called the "Unfinished Chapels." It's this gorgeous, intricately carved structure that just… stops. It has no roof. It’s open to the sky. Jackson: So it was a construction project they just abandoned? Olivia: Exactly. The king who commissioned it died, and they never finished it. And this old man, with a huge grin, says that this is the best part of the whole monastery. He says it’s a perfect expression of life, which is never done. It’s beautiful because it’s unfinished. Jackson: Wow. I love that. So often we see unfinished things as failures. The degree we didn't finish, the business that closed, the book we never wrote. But he’s reframing it as a more honest reflection of reality. Olivia: Precisely. And Bowler connects this to her own father. For forty years, he kept a rejection letter for his doctoral dissertation sealed in his study. It was his great failure, the thing that kept him from a stable academic career. But at seventy years old, he discovers scholars are still citing his unpublished work. So he dusts it off, finishes it, and publishes it himself. He tells Kate, "Progress, not perfection." Jackson: That gives me chills. "Progress, not perfection." That's such a freeing idea. It feels like we're all walking around with our own unfinished cathedrals—that project we abandoned, that skill we never mastered, that relationship that didn't have a storybook ending. Olivia: We are. And we’re told to hide them, to be ashamed of them. Bowler’s work gives us permission to see them as beautiful, as open to the sky. It’s the ultimate rebuttal to the "Best Life Now" culture, which demands a polished, finished product. Jackson: So the final truth isn't some grand secret, it's just... acceptance? That the title of the book is the thesis statement: 'There is no cure for being human'? Olivia: That’s it exactly. The book ends with this appendix, a list of clichés and the more complicated truths she’s learned. Instead of "Live with no regrets," she says, "Facing the past is part of facing the future." Instead of "Everything is possible," she says, "Ask instead, what is possible today?" It’s a shift from grand, impossible ideals to small, courageous, present-moment realities.

Jackson: It feels like the whole book is an exercise in giving us a new vocabulary. A way to talk about the messy, hard, and beautiful parts of life without resorting to cheap sentiment. Olivia: That's a perfect way to put it. The book does three things. First, it dismantles the false, cruel promise of perfection peddled by our culture. Second, it completely redefines our relationship with time, moving us away from the tyranny of productivity. And finally, it gives us this new, more graceful language for our own imperfections, embodied by that beautiful image of the unfinished cathedral. Jackson: It’s not a self-help book, it’s almost an anti-self-help book. It’s not about fixing your life, but about living the one you have, with all its cracks and unresolved chords. Olivia: And its power, I think, lies in giving us permission. Permission to be in pain. Permission to be uncertain. Permission to have a life that doesn't add up to a neat, triumphant story. It gives us permission to be human in a world that relentlessly demands we be superhuman. Jackson: That’s a profound gift. It really makes you think... what's one 'unfinished' part of your life that you could look at with a bit more grace after hearing this? Maybe that language you tried to learn, or that instrument gathering dust in the corner. Olivia: That's a beautiful question. And it’s a much better one than ‘What’s on your bucket list?’ We'd love to hear your thoughts. Find us on our socials and share one of your own 'unfinished cathedrals.' Let's build a community around celebrating progress, not perfection. Jackson: I love that. Let’s do it. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.