No Cure for Being Human

“How do you make your life count when you don’t have much time left? You stop searching for a ‘best life’ and start embracing the life you have.”

1. The False Promise of Perfection

Many believe achieving success and happiness relies on perfect choices or strategies. Kate Bowler explores how this mindset is deceptive, especially in times of tragedy like her cancer diagnosis. She confronts the narrative sold by self-help culture and the prosperity gospel, which implies that misfortune results from personal failure.

Bowler criticizes the prosperity gospel's harmful subtext: if faith promises blessings like health and happiness, then suffering must indicate a lack of belief. When diagnosed with cancer, she realizes how deeply ingrained this mindset is in society. People encourage her to "fight" the disease, as if her willpower alone determines her ability to survive.

Through her journey, Bowler dismantles the idea that suffering is a punishment or something we can always control. Instead, she begins to understand life is complex and unpredictable—not a problem waiting to be fixed by positivity or discipline.

Examples

• Books in the hospital gift shop preaching positivity offended Bowler amid her suffering.
• Encouragement to "kick cancer’s butt" left Bowler feeling misunderstood about her lack of control.
• The prosperity gospel’s tie between faith and health seemed especially hurtful during her illness.

2. The History Behind "Living Your Best Life"

The popular phrase “live your best life” goes hand in hand with today’s obsession with productivity and wellness. Bowler highlights how this concept, rooted in New Age thinking and self-help trends, became a cultural phenomenon yet leads people to mistakenly believe life can be perfected with the right effort.

Originating partially from the self-help movement of the 1980s and later popularized by figures like Joel Osteen, this idea suggests people can transcend hardship with the correct mindset or products. It promotes the illusion of total control over personal circumstances. Bowler pinpoints its harmful consequences: people internalize blame for their struggles or sorrows, assuming these reflect personal failure.

Her personal experience starkly contrasts this approach. Facing terminal illness, she understands some aspects of life—randomness, misfortune, and mortality—are entirely outside human control, no matter how much effort we exert.

Examples

• Joel Osteen's "Best Life Now" crystallized performance over existence.
• Peloton instructors and wellness gurus continue to push this mentality.
• Bowler recognizes her futile attempts to control cancer mirrored this cultural illusion.

3. Time Is Not a Productivity Metric

Bowler grapples with society’s fixation on time as a resource to be optimized. After her diagnosis, she realizes her efforts to "make the most" of her limited time with productivity metrics rob her of fully living and being present.

Her pre-cancer life was marked by constant achievements, from an acclaimed academic career to raising her son Zach. Yet after her diagnosis, even her attempts to savor life—by making gratitude lists or perfecting meaningful moments—turn into another exercise in productivity. Bowler discovers she’s applying the same behaviors to cancer that had once driven her career, only to realize they are fruitless.

She learns to let go of control and allow time to unfold naturally. This surrender becomes a small grace, a way of existing more authentically despite her limited days.

Examples

• Bowler's tendency to document gratitude started feeling like another task.
• Pre-diagnosis, Bowler chased inbox zero and career accolades as signs of success.
• Her realization that time can’t be conquered: it’s best lived without constant evaluation.

4. The Trouble with Bucket Lists

The idea of crafting a bucket list becomes a challenge for Bowler. Such lists, she argues, are often about imposing order or value on life before death. But living doesn’t have to be quantified or measured through experiences checked off a list.

When pressed by her counselor to make a bucket list, Bowler instead shifts perspective. She realizes that chasing set goals—whether climbing the Eiffel Tower or learning tango—doesn’t capture the essence of truly living. By rejecting the traditional bucket list approach, she opts for the slower, richer process of cherishing daily moments that defy neat categorization.

Ultimately, Bowler finds these checklists reflect a human impulse to control life or “get it right,” often at the expense of life’s messy, natural flow.

Examples

• She explores the origins of bucket lists and their links to death (like "kick the bucket").
• Historical perspectives: The Greeks’ Seven Wonders or medieval pilgrimages reflected early attempts at curated living.
• Bowler likens revolutionaries redrawing France's map to humans imposing an unnatural order on life.

5. Is Work Always the Answer?

Bowler comes to question whether ambition always aligns with meaning. Pre-diagnosis, her energies were directed toward building her career and achieving tenure. But when faced with mortality, she wonders: Was all that work worth it?

Cancer forces her to juxtapose fulfilling her academic passions with being present for her family. A friend helps her see there’s no wrong choice: meaning exists in both her writing and her hours spent with her family. Bowler learns work isn’t inherently empty—it’s only when careerism becomes blind that it loses its impact.

This insight allows her to embrace a calling, finding solace in her work when it's balanced with living her personal life.

Examples

• Pre-diagnosis: Bowler sacrificed family expansion for career milestones.
• Her friend suggested her loved ones could find her in the work she loves.
• She balances this realization with her remaining time with her son and husband.

6. Pain Doesn't Need a Purpose

Bowler challenges the cultural tendency to glorify pain as transformative. Society often romanticizes suffering, treating it as a stepping stone toward wisdom or growth.

For Kate, cancer taught her that suffering is simply part of life. She resists the pressure to craft a neat narrative where trauma transforms her into an inspirational figure. Instead, she accepts pain as an uninvited but unavoidable guest. Bowler’s recovery focuses less on extracting meaning and more on the honest acknowledgment of what she has endured.

By resisting the urge to explain away tragic events, Bowler redefines resilience as living authentically, scars and all.

Examples

• The cultural trend of celebrating suffering often isolates real survivors.
• Bowler feels pressed to perform happiness she doesn’t feel post-remission.
• Her story pushes back against agendas framing hardship as an accomplishment.

7. Beauty and the Body After Cancer

After surviving cancer, Bowler grapples with a fractured sense of identity tied to her appearance. Her scars, reminders of what her body survived, alter how she views herself. For so long, her body represented betrayal.

The pressure of societal beauty norms adds another layer. Indeed, these expectations seem absurd—yet she wonders if she might also reclaim some joy in caring about her appearance again. For Bowler, tending to her body with small routines like applying skincare becomes a way of finding connection to herself.

Ultimately, her body is the only one she has. Accepting its imperfections becomes her way of making peace and reentering life fully.

Examples

• Cancer left Kate with scars that served as both survival markers and self-esteem triggers.
• A friend with chronic illness reminded her joy in appearance isn’t shallow.
• The deeper acknowledgment: Her body, damaged but alive, gave her countless sweet moments with loved ones.

8. The Shared Reality of COVID-19

When the COVID-19 pandemic hits, Bowler sees the world grapple with uncertainty, loss, and lack of control—ways she has felt since her diagnosis. The universal anxiety suddenly mirrors her own private experience.

COVID demonstrates that life’s fragility is inescapable. Bowler watches as the global health crisis undermines ideas of control, causing people to seek comfort through productivity projects like baking or crafting. Yet as the pandemic drags on, fatigue sets in and many let go of these efforts, recognizing that simply surviving is enough.

For Bowler, COVID proves suffering and randomness transcend individual control—for better or worse.

Examples

• The promising structure of her clinical trial underscores luck’s role in survival.
• Social media trends like sourdough became widespread attempts to impose meaning.
• The exhaustion post-pandemic parallels Bowler’s own surrender to life’s unpredictability.

9. Letting Go of the "Best Life"

Bowler concludes that life’s value doesn’t lie in chasing perfection or crafting an ideal narrative. Her time nursing her wounds, laughing with loved ones, and stumbling through uncertainty reveals an important truth: the “best life” is simply the one you have left to live.

The cultural push to frame life as a series of achievements fades for her. She finds freedom in relinquishing control and embracing what each day offers—including its challenges. True fulfillment, she learns, comes from showing up for life as it is.

This understanding shifts her perspective, reminding readers that messiness and imperfections are features of being human, not bugs.

Examples

• Bowler rejects gratitude lists in favor of experiencing joy as it comes.
• Embracing her limits allows her to focus on connection over productivity.
• Her ultimate reflection: suffering and randomness don’t make life less worthwhile—they make it real.

Takeaways

1. Surrender the pressure to fix or control every part of life. Let moments unfold naturally without forcing productivity.
2. Resist cultural pressures to glamorize suffering as growth or a battle. Instead, honor struggles for what they are—a part of being alive.
3. Treat your body with care and gratitude, embracing it fully, even when it feels imperfect or broken.