56. What to Do with Our Short, Precious Life with Kate Bowler

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Hello, loves.

Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things.

We're going to jump right in.

I'm so looking forward to this episode.

Sister Amanda and I have been talking about it all weekend.

And that is because we have our dear friend who we've never met in real life

here with us today.

And her name is Kate Bowler.

Kate...

Bowler, Ph.D., which I didn't know before Kate Wow, is a New York Times best-selling author, podcast host, and a professor at Duke University.

She studies the cultural stories we tell ourselves about success, suffering, and whether or not we're capable of change.

She is the author of Blessed, A History of the American Prosperity Gospel, So Good, and The Preacher's Wife, The Precarious Power of Evangelical Women Celebrities.

After being diagnosed with stage four cancer at age 35, she penned the New York Times best-selling memoir, Everything Happens for a Reason.

and Other Lies I've Loved, and her latest No Cure for Being Human and Other Truths I Need to Hear.

Kate hosts the Everything Happens podcast where in warm, insightful, often very funny conversations, she talks with folks like Malcolm Gladwell and Anne Lamotte about what they've learned in difficult times.

She lives in Durham, North Carolina with her family and continues to teach do-gooders at Duke Divinity School.

And I want to tell you all two things.

First of all, Kate, I'm looking at her right now.

She has a huge, beautiful sign behind her, which is the title of her book that says, No Cure for Being Human.

And when I asked her about it, she said she's trying to counteract all of the mandatory good vibes that people are always selling for walls.

And I'm just so excited, Kate, because I feel like with you and your anti-good vibes and me and my passion for demotivational speaking.

We're going to do a lot of good.

And also, I just want to say this one thing, which is completely inappropriate as a feminist and person who believes in people's insides, but you look so pretty.

Oh, that's so nice.

I had a moment right before I saw you.

I was like, hey, this is

not your egg game.

I don't know what game this is, but it's not it.

So thank you.

That makes me feel really special.

You're also very wise and kind and brave and smart, but also pretty.

I accept as a Canadian, just like trying to, trying to push a compliment uphill with me is really hard.

So I'm going to do that work.

Thank you.

So take us to the moment to get all of the listeners up to speed.

Kate at 35 was given a few months to live and her vow to herself was, I want to be alive until I am not.

And this haunting struggle that you talk about a lot is how do I know if I'm doing this right?

We wanted to have you here for this whole community because really what we're talking about is just the reality that every single one of us shares

with Kate, which is that all of our lives will inevitably end.

And we all have this shared struggle to wisely spend our finite time

to be alive until we are not.

So, Kate, can you take us to the moment you're married to your high school sweetheart, you're raising this precious two-year-old son, and you're diagnosed with incurable stage four cancer?

Can you tell us about that time?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I'm sorry for missing the part at the beginning where I say, holy crap, thank you so much for having me.

It's so nice to be here.

I was just so thrown by being complimented.

I just didn't say, Holy crap.

I just, I, um, I just really love you both, and I love these conversations.

So, thank you for having me in one.

I um

feel very honored.

I can you, um, Kate, can you also tell me that I look pretty?

Um,

pretty ish, I mean,

truly, thanks, Kate.

Thanks, Kate.

I accept.

Okay, Carrie, that's the answer to our finite time, man.

Just going around, just telling everyone that.

I do.

What's so funny too is that I think one of the very first moments that I knew that I maybe wanted to

live a little bit longer and have, it was that when I knew that I was ready to have dumb plans, when I was like, hey, do you think it's okay if I maybe try to be a little decorative or start buying, start buying slightly slotty looking clothes again?

Something that doesn't just sort of bleach well and dry well and

can be removed with only one hand in a post-hospital surgery moment.

I just, yeah, man, isn't it so fun just to be ridiculous and decorative and to do things for nothing at all?

And that makes us feel special.

And

that was maybe the first feeling that went away was that I was

like a body and that my body was good.

Because I think mentally it was just so hard to switch into the moment where I used to just be a normal person.

I was a joyfully boring historian historian who loved footnotes and very long, dense prose.

And I just wanted to have my, my dream.

And my dream was just to be a professor and talk about wine and cheese functions and to have this very idea heavy life.

And then all of a sudden my life was the one that blew up.

And my, it was the fall and I wasn't supposed to make it to the spring.

And I think the first moment was a surrealness, like, like maybe all along it was everybody else that mattered.

And it wasn't, somehow it just wasn't me.

And so I accepted the devastation of it with a kind of awful acceptance, as if it somehow made sense.

And

that

I realized only maybe after writing the book that it was.

It was a result of having begged for care for so many months and being turned away, that when my pain was not believed, that just somehow in the mix of things, I stopped believing that my pain mattered.

And so when I was finally diagnosed, there was not a healthy moment when I was like, oh, yeah, right.

Of course, it's me.

Sister, you and I talked about that.

Yeah.

The rage that I have over the way you were told over and over that your physical problems were the result of psychological problems.

So basically you were sick because you were crazy.

And we know that this wildly disproportionately happens to women and even more so for black women.

But what can you say to us about the inexcusable reality that women who are fighting for their lives also have to be fighting to be taken seriously?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because we're told that there's a good patient and we just need to be the good patient.

We just need to be cheerful, easy to care for.

We need to be,

you know, descriptive about our pain, but like, let's not get, let's not overdo it.

Don't make me uncomfortable while you're telling me about it.

And by the time that I, I mean, I had been sent home, it was about five months that I was bounced around between doctors when I could at times barely walk because I would double over in pain.

At one point, I just went to the ER and I was like, guys,

I can't do this anymore.

But because I

I didn't have the appearance of someone in that much pain, which is to read gender and

relative youth and all kinds of things onto not being believed.

I was sent home with peptobismol.

So it wasn't until I

yelled and I've never, I'd never yelled at someone before, little one someone in a doctor's office and was like, I'm not leaving.

I'm not leaving until you give me a scan.

And it was only when I

when I lost it and wouldn't play the role anymore that I got the scan that told me that I, that it, by that point, it had escalated to stage four cancer.

That's amazing that that's what you had to do.

It's not exactly the same, but the, the time I first got help is when I walked into a, I was in high school and I walked into a guidance counselor's office and said, I'm not doing this anymore.

I can't do it.

I'm not leaving here until you help me.

And that's when I ended up in the hospital.

But it was because I ref, I was like, I'm just not going anywhere.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's the showdown moment.

It's a showdown moment.

It's amazing that that's what women have to do.

Yes.

Yeah.

There was the only glorious hysterical moment of joy I had about that was 24 hours later after I'd had the scan and for it was so bad.

It was the same man who was assigned to do my surgery.

And in the pre-surgery moments, I grabbed him by his lapels and I pulled him really close to my face in front of all the nurses when I was lying in the gurney.

And I said, I had better not die looking into your eyes.

And that is the most true.

When the nurses burst out laughing and then I burst out laughing, it was just, it was like a, it was a good moment.

Yeah.

That's why all of your work is good moments.

That's why all of your work.

Yeah.

It's so good because you take us to the brink of tears.

And then the next paragraph, we're laughing.

And the same is true of your podcast.

One of the things I found cool and interesting is that you talk about.

this near-death experience study that somebody did.

And then the reason it got your attention is because you had a similar experience after

you got your diagnosis.

And I found it interesting because we're all so terrified of finding out how, when we're going to die.

We do all know we're going to die, but we do find it, you know, very uncomfortable to think about

snowing.

Yeah.

So we all kind of know, like, want to know, like, will I, what will I do?

Like, will I, I have that Jerry Maguire moment that's like, I'm not going to do what you think I'm going to do, which is just freak out.

Right.

But you say,

it seems too odd to say what I knew to be true that when I was sure I was going to die, I didn't feel angry.

I felt only love,

which is what they had discovered in the near-death experience study.

So can you just talk about that?

Yeah, it was very weird because it wasn't even that I always just felt loving.

I felt loved.

Like I felt so all of a sudden loved like it was glue that was holding together together not just like my sanity but my like the ability when you look at someone who loves you and then they mirror back to you something true about you and i

then felt like i wasn't in those moments like part of this disposable medical you know train wreck that i'd been a part of and it was The study they'd done where they'd interviewed a number of people who had had near-death experiences by just a variety of

different causes, attempted suicide, like labor, all kinds of like a car accident, and that there was a surrealness to

a very sort of undescribable and socially surprising feeling, which is to suddenly feel loved.

And

I felt very intensely that I was loved by God, but also just all the gorgeous moonfaced people who were

just being

people where they bring you socks and they know that you haven't brushed your hair in five days.

And I felt bubble-wrapped.

And that taught me, I guess, in it, that all my hard work, all my attitude, all my like striving, that there's a moment when we are so weak that there's just no striving that's possible.

And in those moments, I really do think that it is, there is like a spiritual community A game that happens where we can just be so flooded by other people's love that it makes the unbearable somehow carryable in those moments.

Didn't you say that that feeling, and by the way, you were as honest as always and say, and you say that does go away.

Yeah, yeah.

Gone, gone, gone.

And I'm petty.

And I get pissed.

I'm a colossal dick again.

Yeah.

Right, of course.

And that's comforting also.

But.

But it was so strong that you, some of your first thoughts were, I don't want to go back.

Yeah.

I don't want to go back.

And did you mean when you wrote that, like back pre-diagnosis?

I don't want to, I just felt a little,

oh, I don't want to unknow this.

Like, I guess, because you know, when you feel like the, the, you, everything in the world just breaks apart.

And then, and then almost like, like you're looking at life, but it's like a, like a shirt that's inside out and you see all the seams for everything.

Then all of a sudden in all the jagged seams,

there's just so much.

There's just so much beauty in the world.

Like you notice your pain, but then you notice everybody else's, like the, person struggling to reach something and the person that helps them, someone in the cancer clinic smoothing their mom's hair.

And in all those moments, it feels like you just get flooded by how

like fragile and gorgeous and ridiculous life is.

And I just kept feeling like, man, I don't want to, I really hope I don't unlearn this because it's, um, I wouldn't have known it if my life didn't feel so unbelievably fragile and somehow like crystalline in in those moments.

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And then you got some really cool advice from a dear guide and friend during that time.

And I come back to this all the time because it means something different to me all the time.

But

they said, after a long, beautiful conversation, they just said to you, don't skip to the end.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Talk to us about what that meant then and what that still means.

I

work with these wonderful geriatrics, she said, respectfully of all of her academic colleagues, but like everybody was like, everybody was post-70.

And meanwhile, I'm like dying at 35.

And I was like, guys, now's the time.

Sit me down.

Like, what adds up?

Like, you've had these lives.

What is it?

Like, what benchmarks?

Did you get somewhere?

Did you, did you accomplish something?

Were you at a kid's wedding?

Like, did you, were you, did you become a certain kind of person?

Like, just give me the math and I want to get there.

Is it, because the math I was running is my kid is two.

This is how long it takes to launch a kid.

This is how long until they have memories.

Okay, gosh, I have to live long enough for him to remember me.

And I'm just like,

all just trying to make all the math work.

And I was like, just give me the answer.

And my friend is like, oh, okay, but it, but then it comes undone.

And if it comes undone, and he's saying it comes undone at 70-something, then I need to realize like there is no arrival.

There's no,

there's no, like, I guess, like, almost like bucket listy check

list of experiences I'm going to get.

And if there's not enough, and there never will be that feeling, how do I learn to live like that?

Can you tell us?

Yeah, yeah.

There's an

steps to ultimate life fulfillment.

I'm going to become a self-help author.

Guys, I've got a workshop.

Oh,

wouldn't it be amazing if we could just sell each other that?

No, I would, I would die.

Listen, what I said about no cure for being human is I believe Kate Bowler is the only one we can trust to tell us the truth.

That is for damn sure.

Oh, my darling.

It's so tell us the truth.

How do we, there's no being done.

Yeah, there's no being done.

There's no done and there's no formula and there's no, there's no enough except those moments where you feel it and you know it and like, and you're loved and it feels like transcendence for like.

a hot second and it's um and then the second it's gone you feel like you're gonna starve to death because i think that is how the beautiful good stuff is.

Like love, it makes us hungry.

Beauty, it makes us hungry.

Like if there was a solution to the problem of being a person, we would have found it.

We wouldn't be

stuck managing our endless, beautiful, chronic, stupid, gorgeous lives.

So yeah, the no formula thing is kind of,

it's kind of, it's kind of killing me.

Cause like, it's, I feel like it's all I think about because I think about cultural cultural cliches, like as a historian and as a person who's just trying to find a way to live, is I'm always like latching on to another formula and then trying to realize, oh, there's a, there's a historical construct there.

There's a reason why I believed it.

Now I just have to dissolve it in my hands and then and then live open-handed again.

And I'm not loving it.

I'm not loving it.

Live open-handed again.

Yeah.

The part that the like unformula part that just

sunk sunk in my soul when you said 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.

I mean, I just,

because if I could finish it, I just,

it's the challenge of every day, right?

It's what happens when you look at the people who need you and love you, or you look at your inbox, or you look at all the things you hope to do, or the places you hope to go.

And

it feels like it can't possibly be better that way.

Wouldn't it be better if we could just

add it up?

But if you know your masterpiece could never be finished and it's never supposed to,

then maybe

then the point is just to keep painting.

Yes.

It's not to ever have a finished product, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

When you talk about this part, like

got me in the soul,

because you were talking really honestly about your fear of dying.

And I love this question so much because I think it's mine, you know.

You said,

do you think when I die, I won't have to feel

a part

in my mind.

I'm always making up 40 million ways that that won't happen.

Yeah.

But like I'll still, I'm designing heaven.

Yes.

I'm a bit controlling.

So I feel like maybe whatever it is, that I might have a better plan.

But can you talk to us about that fear of apartness?

And does it have to do mostly with Zach and Toby?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I had been

you know, as a very Jesus-y person and I work in a Jesus-y,

you know, divinity school, and I get a lot of Jesus-y mail.

And like most of the solutions to the problem of pain that were handed to me that to me were the most painful were attempts at Christian solutions to say,

well, it's as if like your life is this past, present, and future.

And don't worry, we've really freighted the future with some really great solutions.

to the problem of your horrible present.

Like heaven is going to be amazing.

You can all, you know, you can all be together there.

God will dry every tear, et cetera, et cetera.

And

as if if I wasn't thrilled about the possibility of heaven, that I was somehow less faithful or less,

yeah, less good.

And

it just made me so angry.

Faith can be many things and it just, it just can't lie.

And I knew it was a lie to say that my...

that my child's life would be somehow as good if I weren't his mom.

I knew it wasn't true.

It could still be good, would it be as good?

Not to compliment myself, but I'm a kind of a

good mom to that kid.

I was just scared that

heaven would be the moment when I miss it all.

I don't get to smell his head.

I don't get to see him graduate.

Like, it just felt ridiculous.

What a ridiculous thing to say to someone who is so terrified about missing it.

And

I think that

My vision of whatever

a beautiful future with God might be, I do believe that hope is like this anchor that gets dropped in the future.

And there's this like beautiful story about love that we are being pulled toward, but none of it ever feels like it's

it can even make sense of the hungers we have as

people who have people who rely on us.

So I never think

there's going to be a spiritual solution to the problem of the future, but I do know that

in the end, it will all be love.

But it's just very hard to imagine that in the meantime, when all I want is now and just endless now.

You put a sign in your living room that said,

you are my bucket list

for Tobin and Zach.

My sister and I talked about that for an hour on Saturday.

For different reasons, we felt we were so moved by it for different reasons.

I was moved by it, one, because I actually feel that way.

Like whenever anyone asks me, what do I want to do?

Yeah.

Like I almost feel guilty because I have no

bucket list.

Like I don't want to go anywhere.

I don't want to do any other things.

I don't.

But that idea that your people

are what you want to have the endless nows with

is so beautiful.

I love that sign so much.

Can you just tell me about this part of your story is extremely personal and important to me, which is that right after your diagnosis, you started swearing

a lot.

Can you?

I felt so validated in that moment.

I have not had to wait for a diagnosis to start swearing.

I started swearing at maybe four.

But just talk to us for a minute about that yeah what is that about was it like some kind of honesty coming i of course i relate swearing with honesty yeah me too you do i do i think i yeah i think that um the tragic comedy of life is so terrible and absurd and awful and usually funny in the same moment and none of it feels very polite and like i

work in this.

So I work mostly with these mainline traditions and those churches are more sort of like like a lot of stained glass and a lot of like, oh, it's 12.05.

The organ's playing.

Let's head out of here.

And I started to feel like everyone would have been fine if I just died very politely, just sort of quietly absented myself.

And

I just love it in a television show or in a novel or something where the character is like, fuck it.

And just like flips a table and says all the, all the unscripted things.

It was the beginning of the season of Lent where like, you you know, Jesus dies, blah, blah, blah.

It's a big moment at the end, but like, in the meantime, I was just so fucking enraged.

I was enraged about everything.

And yeah, rage really helped me

feel like I wasn't living in this sort of like precious moments culture anymore with little sort of delicate figurines and doilies and women who had the vapors.

I was like, you know what?

Like, we're to do anything.

We're going to be brutally honest, regardless of whether or not it feels acceptable anymore.

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Let me ask you a question because I'm always, I'm always curious about this.

And then we can move on from the swearing because people give me a hard time for swearing a lot.

That's like

but my question is, is the voice inside everyone else's head not constantly swearing?

Because

I'm actually just supposed, I'm trying to match my insides with my outsides.

So the reason I'm swearing is because that is honestly what's going on.

My, my inner voice all day, like, is just like, what the fuck?

Fuck, what the fuck?

Fucking fuck.

Like

every once in a while, fuck you.

What the fuck is all that my very brain says all day.

And then

and then every once in a while, they'll be a holy shit.

Yes.

It's like one of those moments you're talking about.

That's my awe.

But, but, Kate, is your inner voice not constantly cursing, or is it?

And then you're translating to something that's

better.

There, and well, now I go, I wish I remember the exact study, but it was one where they let people either put their hand in like icy cold water and then they timed it and they tried to figure out people's pain threshold based on whether they were allowed to swear while doing it.

And it was the people who were screaming that were able to keep their hand submerged for longer.

And I thought, done,

yes, of course which is i'm always having um needles massive stomach incisions painful ridiculous conversations uh and then a kid's birthday and then and then small talk at the and i i find the pendulum swings to be so insane that i need a i need i need a big vocabulary to manage the wide spectrum of reality And so it's pain and it's joy and it's a lot of fucking intolerance about the middle.

Yes.

Instead of that, like demanding to be seen, because one of the themes that I love about your work is like this false dichotomy that we have of like, oh, Kate's dying.

Not the rest of us, though.

Yeah.

The rest of us are not.

Exactly.

Like, and so it's like, like,

let's keep this like,

oh, Kate is over here so sad.

And like, surely Kate's going to like find a way to present her problem to us in the regime that makes sense in our track and she's going to keep it really sweet so we can all keep this going is part of that just like

asserting yourself of being like first of all i'm still here and second of all y'all are too okay So get on board because the train's coming for all of us.

I wish that I could just have bottled that speech and then play it at every social gathering.

Okay.

That is, that is a

perfect summary of the like, because the inspirational genre is for people that we, you guys talk about this all the time is the people that we pity and don't want to you know solve fundamentally relate or solve build the bridge to where they are and uh yeah this is part of you know what someone said one time to me was i'm everyone's inspiration and nobody's friend yes the grand pretending is that we are all not a breath away from the problem that irreparably changes our lives.

And if everyone can live over here

with in

the land of delicacy and precarity, then then there's a lot more.

I just, that that is the thing that makes me scream.

Thank you, Amanda.

Yeah, I had a conversation about that with a friend when your first, when your book came out, because she had just read it and she said, I just can't imagine.

And I was like, but you don't actually don't have to.

Like, there's some things we have to imagine, but that's actually, this is a fact.

You don't have to.

That is the perfect thing to say.

Yeah, you do feel like you're sort of breaking it to people gently where you're like, hey, guys, we're all dying.

We're all,

we have moments of being resourced and lucky.

And then the rest of the time we're not.

Yes.

And when we're not, we're going to want to remember that suffering is not an anomaly.

It's part of the grand continuum of our experience and that you're not either bad or, you know, unlucky.

You're just, you're just a person.

Again, turns out.

Talk to us about being a person and this pendulum and this ridiculous, absurd thing we have to do, which is you know you just said go through the pain and then go to a kid's birthday party we're in the midst of the very long holiday season and um you my friend are one of those crazy christmas people okay

you actually get mad at other people who claim to be christmas people because they are in fact not as christmassy as you

okay but she's a canadian she's a christmas canadian okay

different

different breed varsity

there's no care for christmas canadians that's right i'm sure

yeah we bring our own winter but my dad is like the my dad is the historian of christmas like written a bajillion books on the history of christmas so we like we next level like someone's going to break in and do a show about the number of ornaments we have for quote research reasons

So tell us, Kate Buller, give us a foolproof process for how one survives the holidays when there is so much grief and loss and fear in all of us, and we are also being forced to be cheery

and

really like, because that's just a good metaphor for all of it.

But you still love Christmas.

You love the holidays.

So tell me,

how do we do it?

Yeah, you can see I'm like adjusting my chair to like

put me out.

How the podcast gets serious.

Finally, a question I've been waiting for.

We have these intense and horrifying, calcified scripts about how we're supposed to be, and especially women, and especially during a holiday, where there's a way that we, you know, we don't, no one can tell the truth.

We have the good linens out.

Yes.

And, you know,

I'm sorry that we lost people we can't get back, but

Aunt Linda's here.

And good God, we're going to small talk.

And, you know, of course, like the second we're like locked into the story of our lives, it's almost always not true.

And the truth of our lives is that the moments of like, like the holidays are

like feasting and light and music is, and we do that in the middle of the darkness because that's when we need it most.

And it's not to say in our culture, which it does, it's all bright sides, no setbacks, just setups.

Everything's always, you know, doors closing and windows opening.

And

the holidays or any other time is like a great moment just to say,

one, like, what honesty is, is, is unacceptable here?

What is, what honesty has been

been made socially awkward?

And could I just have a little more of it?

And two, like a lot of permission that like, where there is joy, there is almost always sorrow.

Like the way we sing a song, when it reminds us of our dad, or

the way we might see other people's kids gather around and we didn't get to have that kid or that relationship.

Like the joy is also like grief is like tucked right in its shadow and just letting ourselves be, have a thousand different feelings about the same day in the same day.

Because

the Being crowded over onto one end of the emotional spectrum is something Americans are very good at.

Apparently, the only acceptable emotions are joy, happiness, optimism, the Hallmark app, which is actually really good.

If you want to check off that you've seen all of the

movies, which I do.

But the reason why I love

holidays or random bakathons or parties or whatever is because life is so hard.

It's like the second you get a moment of joy, just like take it.

And if it isn't on the prescripted day, let it go.

But like, we need all, we need like, like pain has like scooped out something something in us and now great now there's a big space that joy is going to fill so i let it i like go out of my way to pick big dumb things to be so thrilled about because i know the next day that might not be the day that i get to have you know the world's largest santa claus waving in the wind in my lawn god i love that so it's like we it's not we celebrate because we're not sad it's we celebrate because we're so sad

exactly because we're so delicate and we get it for a minute and we should take it, just take it.

Kate, you say, um,

as a mom and a controlling human being, you really resonate with this, but and I'm sure that a lot of parents, or maybe just human beings, will, but the idea that I am the center that must hold,

I

am the center that must hold.

Do you still feel that?

Is that a going back and forth too?

Yeah.

What is if we are not the center?

I know intellectually

that I am not the center that must hold.

Yeah.

I'm not sure I know that in my bones.

No.

Performatively.

I mean, who's going to make sure we all have towels, right?

Who's going to.

Who's going to remember that, you know, insert 2 million errands?

It is so difficult to see all the weight that you carry and not then imagine that life is

not possible if we're not doing that work, smiling that smile.

I always picture it like turning the big wheel so that everybody else's lives can function, which sounds a little bit like the machine and lost, which

turns out was for no reason.

So an apt metaphor.

You're totally right.

I put myself in the center of a world and then my world was ending.

And I

it has been and maybe part of that is just the natural narcissism of love is we're like, you can't live without me and you can't live without me doing these things.

But tragedy is is the time when you're forced to rewrite all of the rules about how your ecosystem works because you don't get to have the pride.

of making sure everybody else's needs are met before your own.

Like I have, it has humbled me in my

view of what I can even do in a day, but also just how much I really do need other people and was unwilling to let anyone else carry it.

Mostly because of, you know,

years of deeply ingrained patriarchy and my unwillingness to challenge that set of assumptions.

I've needed food.

I've needed people to like physically wash my hair, to carry me, to push my wheelchair, to pick up my kid.

That was the worst, like pick up my kid because I couldn't.

And all those things felt impossible, but in there was a challenge to that story that I was always going to be the only person who could love.

And having a bigger picture of that has been like an important truth that has been hard for me to hear.

Part of that reminds me of what you talk about a lot, which is this kind of uniquely American ideal of like, you are limitless.

Anything is possible.

And it's meant to be hopeful and liberating, right?

Like go get them, tiger.

But it becomes this kind of cage of rage.

You mentioned rage earlier, and I'm fascinated by it because it, it's like when our reality crushes against that promise,

we feel

duped or shamed.

Or, and I've heard you talk about this in the context of recent, you know, this unprecedented time we've been going through, where you said, when you have less and less and are expected to create more and more,

you just have to rage.

Like, what is that

American insistence that everything is still possible while the, you know, the ladder is being pulled out from under us in a million different ways?

What does that do

to us?

And how do we replace it?

How do we replace it?

Three steps.

Right.

Yes.

Well,

Kate Bowler's next webcast.

Three steps.

It's the whole problem with wisdom, right?

Because it makes us into self-help monsters.

Take like Kate.

I know.

What is it?

I know this.

I only trust Kate Bowler and a couple other people.

And I still, if you give me a

BuzzFeed quiz on six ways to make me fixed and happy, I'm taking it.

I'm taking it.

I bought one in the airport the other day.

I mean, you cannot pry them out of my hands.

I mean, it is, it's because, because it's in every genre.

We are sold a story of unlimited agency, unlimited power to choose in every area of our life.

Oh, is your inbox out of control?

Try the, you know, I just bought the happy inbox.

There's a whole management, there's a whole management strategy you haven't tried.

Are you in a inbox?

It has to be happy.

Oh,

yes.

Thrilled.

And then have, have you not applied these same principles?

to health and wellness and your and the last smoothie regime and have you detoxed recently and have you have you appropriately mastered your mornings time to and then like insert 200 books I have previously purchased.

And like, there's like a plan for the, for the excellent, perfect,

the, the mom, the, the partner, the, the, the boss lady.

I mean, we can do it in every area.

And the, the lie is that

you can always fix your life.

Anything your life is just a series of choices, just add them all up.

And if the, if the sums are too hard and you can't get there and it's impossible, it's only because you haven't done small enough actions.

There's always tomorrow.

And like, it sounds very empowering because in so many ways we do all need to just take small, little steps.

But the big lie is that

we are, you know, that we are masters of our destiny when most of the things that happen are the things that happen to us.

And most of the solutions are not individualistic solutions.

They're better policies.

They're, you know, the end of medical bankruptcy in this country.

They are structural solutions to the evils of racism and sexism and

phobias, which we've seen enshrined into

the codes that build our society.

None of those are going to make it into the seven steps to

gosh, anything.

And as three white women, that is one of the hallmarks of white feminism too.

That all we need to do is get a few of us higher.

And so let's just keep, let's just keep like plugging and plugging away and optimizing ourselves.

Optimizing.

Right.

Instead of looking at the policies that screw everybody.

Yes.

Yeah.

We have to, of course,

work and think structurally about how change happens.

And also, we have our regular dumb days.

And so we can't say nothing is possible.

And we can't say everything is up to our agency.

We just, we do have to find a really gentle, culturally appropriate language for limited agency.

And I find it, it, it, it, people don't love it because it sounds realistic.

But it's, I think it's the work of hope.

It's just small, small, durable, beautiful hope.

Kate, can you add that to your new line of signs?

Like, can we get rid of everything is possible?

And can you add a few things are possible?

That's the sign I want.

A few things.

I love it.

I find it incredibly liberating.

So do I.

It's not, because when you say anything is possible, it means the fact that I see you not doing everything means you're just not trying hard enough.

Right.

But if you, but if I say to myself, it is literally not possible for me to do all the things

for my kids that I'd be doing if I didn't have

employment.

And it's literally not possible for me to do all the things I'd be doing over here if I have these two things, like that is freedom for me.

I can just say, it's not possible.

A few things are possible.

I'm going to prioritize in my life the things that I, that are important to me.

And I'm going to say, I'm going to do these things.

And then I'm going to say to the rest of the world, that also means I'm not going to do these other things.

Yes.

Yes.

Because it's not possible.

Yes.

Yes.

And there is a very boring, a very boring virtue that that, because I was like, what is that?

What's the, what is the wisdom to choose there?

Like, what's that called?

And hilariously, the virtue is prudence.

Prudence is apparently the wisdom to choose.

And like, what a great,

delightfully fuddy-duddy sounding gift we all need right now.

It's like, how would I know?

Huh, prudence.

Sissy, you're such a prune.

I've always been such a prune.

This is really coming together for me.

God.

I love that.

I love it too.

What you just said about the

how everything in life is this series of choices, you know, like that, that's the, we're also living by this myth too.

Often our experiences that most profoundly affect us are the ones we never chose at all.

Like that those are the things.

And so I'm just wondering, you say, I didn't, I had to, I'm trying to remember.

I had nothing to do but survive the feeling that some pain is for no reason at all.

Does that feel to you in your bones like a freedom?

Does that feel cruel and crazy making?

Yeah.

What does that feel like when you,

especially in a culture that tells us that every pain is for a reason?

Every bit, it is making us stronger.

It is

showing us the light.

Like that, we must believe that.

It's a balance sheet.

It's a balance sheet.

You're losing it over here, but over here you're gonna get this other thing

nets out nets yes that's why i do love it when people like rewrite cultural cliches like what doesn't kill you you know makes you stronger and people give me ones like what doesn't kill you we'll try again tomorrow and i i like that so much but also kate don't you think it's a way of keeping us in our place too because like i'll never forget just talking to a bunch of women who had survived sexual assault and almost all of them said but i'm stronger now i'm stronger now.

Or like, you know, a few people who were abused by their parents, but I'm stronger now.

And I want to be like, but imagine how strong you'd be if you hadn't been abused.

Yes.

Like, what if?

I think it is one of the

hardest burdens that we put on survivors of anything is that we force them to say, and I'm glad.

that I learned or that I'll never go back because or it made me who I am today.

And I think all of those are sometimes,

I mean, in there, and this is like the needle to thread, right?

Is like, there are hard, glittering, terrible truths, things we learn by going through genuinely awful things.

And I want to celebrate each and every one of those bits of like incredibly hard one bits of wisdom and simultaneously never, ever, ever say that there is any math that is in any way going to compensate for what has been robbed from people.

I didn't know that until I was part of a clinical trial that I thought was for my betterment.

I thought that I was getting the same treatment that somebody else would have gotten.

I was, I thought I was getting cutting edge at a sudden because that was always the language.

And I'm so lucky, everybody, doctors, nurse, everybody, I'm so lucky.

And then in the end, to find out that there was all kinds of protocols, chemo,

things that brought my organs to near toxicity that that were for the sake of the experiment and were never for my betterment.

And they never would have told me that if I hadn't gone bananas researching it to say, wait, are you saying that

this was for you and not for me?

And I want to be able to say something true.

about the fact that my life was saved, that one of those drugs was great for me, that I'm so grateful.

Thank you so much for the resources I am.

And in some very narrow way, that I'm lucky, that I will never, ever accept when people say that, aren't I so glad that?

And didn't it make it okay that when I was,

you know, used for purposes that were not my own?

And like, can we just have a system where both things can be true at the same time?

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So,

Kate, I have for a very long time known that I live on this kind of horizon living world where I'm always looking beyond,

always working for that, but never ever arriving.

So, not living.

And I had never had the words for it until I read.

You how you were talking about how your favorite topic is possible futures.

Yay.

Just possible futures.

Yes.

And how you realized that when you really thought about it, it wasn't the problem, it wasn't the not stopping to smell the roses, but you said, it's this:

failing to love what is present and deciding to love what is possible instead.

Yeah.

Failing to love what is present and deciding to love what is possible instead.

I, I've never heard anything that described my

feeling

before.

And I

love the way that you described it because it really does feel like love.

It's confusing to have it because you're tending to that thing.

You're nurturing it.

You're loving it into existence.

You are loving,

but you're just loving the thing that is never the thing in front of you.

And I

just really want to honestly ask you, like, did you ever figure that out?

And also, what's the balance?

Because, how do you figure it out?

Like, for example, that study, like, if you had just loved what was present and not dug your heels in and tried to figure that out,

you wouldn't have saved yourself from that situation.

Right.

So, like, how do I know what that's right?

That's right.

Let go of and what to not let go of

forced us.

Yes.

That, oh my gosh.

Yeah.

And Amanda, it makes me want to ask you, like, what you're, when you, when, do you have that, you have that scrambly feeling you get where you're just kind of like move reaching to reaching, reaching, reaching?

I'm never, I, I'm always excited.

I mean,

Kate, we were, we had someone come over into our house and was like, you buy this new boiler for your home, you'll never have to get another boiler.

And I sat on the stairs and I wept because I was like, no boilers come after this boiler?

It was like, uh,

but I'm always for the next.

It's what's the next, what will be our next thing?

And I realized like

the next boiler, like, this is how I'm living my life.

Yes.

It is the

next plan.

And we have our title, which is Bowler on Boilers.

But I, but that is what I feel like I'm doing and loving my buckets now by preparing a future for them, but I'm never with them

In, I don't know how to, I don't know how to sit there and love what is.

I don't know how to love what is because I'm so busy creating what will be the thing that will be love next.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We're, it's this weird, it's this very strange thing we all have where we're handed a whole pile of minutes.

And then there's every now and then they transform into moments.

And those moments are like stretchy and taffy and transcendent and gorgeous.

And they're always filled with, for me, someone doing something very dumb.

Oh, someone's always yelling at mine.

And like, someone is just, there's like a heightened, there's like a heightened, gorgeous moment.

You feel like the whole world, you could just pause for a second just to watch you catch your breath.

And like those, and then, and then, you know, and then we're stuck with minutes again or just garbage, regular in traffic, inbox minutes.

And I think part of the

difficult kind of frustrations we have every day is like, well, we know that we can't just turn all of our minutes into moments.

That's the version of be present that I think is absolutely bullshit and just another wildly inappropriate standard to set, where, like, you have to be the transcendent, you know, partner and nature gazer and et cetera.

And like, it's just, it is not possible to

smell.

I can't even be so many roses.

Nature gazer and partner.

God.

No, endless, rapturous awe at life itself i'm sorry it won't happen no one can do it i'm sure we've all met one person we're like maybe you but not even them yeah i'm like it's not possible and like because then and then we get you know transactional okay well what if i just add up all my minutes then they'll become moments and that unfortunately is also not true because um

because people are magic and moments are magic and then they come and then they go and we don't even always know when in a day like don't you feel it in a day there's like a minute minute, like there's just

where everything is alive and bright.

Yes.

And then it's gone.

It's just fireflies just blinking on and off.

And we want so much to control it and we want so much to predict it.

And it sounds like, Amanda, it would be nice if you could also just count it and line them up and then make sure there's just always going to be more of them.

Part of that

was taken away because I had to stop using future tense for a couple of years.

I could never say, we will.

And that to me felt like I couldn't speak a language that everybody spoke.

And that used to be my favorite.

It was like my mother tongue.

It was like, hey, maybe we could.

What about in the summer we would?

And I was like, could be drunk on it, just the tomorrows.

God, I love tomorrow.

And but I knew I couldn't just live in today because today sometimes is like super shitblood work.

and estate planning or just like a PTA meeting, like things I just truly hate.

And

so all of the conventional wisdom about how you can solve the problem of pain by being in the present, I think we just have to agree is like just wonderful and completely, completely alive.

It is the mindfulness will not make us less human.

Mindfulness will never make us

less.

I just always think of hunger.

but less like we're going to starve to death just with the sheer want of more.

I think we will feel like that until we die.

And I think it is okay because it means we are alive

and that we know what love is.

There's never enough.

So, yeah, I really hear what you're saying about even down to the dumbest boiler,

the idea that it is finite breaks our fucking hearts.

And that I think is just

because all we want is more.

And so,

because of all of that, our next right thing is going to be from Boiler Bowler herself.

This,

I think I'm going to get, I think I'm going to get this right because I've read both of your books many, many times over.

But

there's this scene when you've seen, not a scene, it's an actual situation.

God.

I'll tell Abby, Abby, baby, remember the scene from the soccer game?

She's like, no, babe, that was a real life.

Okay.

You come out of surgery.

You're still a little bit high on your pain meds.

Oh, God.

Bowler high on pain meds.

You can read it just for that.

You say this, okay?

You come out of surgery.

You're surrounded by the people you love the most, friends, family.

And you basically, to me, what I read it.

as is that you basically offer everyone a benediction in that room.

Okay.

You tell them the truth of things because you have no more time for untruth.

Okay.

And because you're high.

So

this is when this benediction is from Kate Bowler, but it is for everyone listening.

Okay.

Because the truth of what Kate is telling us today is all of our shared reality.

Okay, which is that we don't know how much time.

So here you go.

I'm sitting with a beloved friend.

Oh my dear one, it's time.

It's time to go.

You can leave your career.

Yes, it's still undone.

The work here is still undone.

But if you stay here, a bitterness is going to eat up everything I love about you.

If you don't go, I will hate you forever.

A colleague is sitting beside me, and I am, for a reason I can't later remember, telling him what to do.

You can't be happy unless you forgive them and set them aside.

There is no way around it, buddy.

You have to forgive.

I save my most horrible love for Chelsea, my rock, my friendship twin.

The nurses are changing my bandages, and I have my phone pressed hot against my ear.

Chelsea and I are trying to talk, but there is too much to say.

I think I'm running out of time, honey, I say finally.

I'm not trying to be dramatic, but here's what I worry about.

What if you are too?

She knows what I'm saying.

She is working harder than anyone I have ever known, but her selflessness has caused her to surrender too much of herself to someday.

And now, someday has come, at least for me.

I have to go, I say finally.

I've got to adjust my meds.

But we just sit there clinging to goodbye before I say at last: go live your life, Shells.

All these words I'm tripping over are benedictions.

Live unburdened, live free, live without forevers that don't always come.

These are my best hopes for you: that you press forward at last.

Kate fucking bowler.

Oh my darling.

Oh my gosh.

I'm so bossy when I'm dying.

You are an honest dream come true on this earth of ours.

We adore you,

Pod Squad.

We love you.

When life gets hard, don't forget you can do a few hard things.

Yes, that's right.

Not all of them.

Yeah, not many.

Not many, to tell you the damn truth.

Not that.

Maybe one or zero.

Honestly,

we love you, Kate.

And don't worry.

We're coming back with Kate on Thursday.

We're not letting her go.

Oh, I love you.

Thank you.

I give you Tish Melton and Brandy Carlisle.

I walked through fire,

I came out the other side.

I chased desire,

I made sure I got what's mine.

And I continue

to believe

that I'm the one for me.

And because I'm mine,

I walk the line.

Cause we're adventurers, and heartbreaks are map.

A final destination

we lack.

We've stopped asking directions

to places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives bring,

we can do a heart again.

I hit rock bottom, it felt like a brand new start.

I'm not the problem,

sometimes things fall apart.

And I continue to believe

the best

people are free.

And it took sometime.

But I'm finally fine.

Cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on that.

A final destination

we lack.

We stopped asking directions

to places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives bring,

we can do a hard pain.

Adventures and heartbreaks on that.

We might get lost, but we're okay with that.

We've stopped asking directions

in some places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives bring,

we can do hard things.

Yeah, we can do hard things.

Yeah, we

can do

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