Books: Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Loved by Kate Bowler (Part 5)

So let's continue talking about the cancer book. As a reminder, here's what I've talked about so far: I told you some before stories. I talked about the American Dream. I talked about Today. I talked about grief.

Everything Happens for a Reason by Kate Bowler

I didn't realize until I read this book that I felt like I deserved this condition. Like there must have been something that I had done, thought, said, imagined, that made this make sense. Even though I knew (and know) that life isn't fair, I still felt like this was something that I had coming. Like the title says, everything happens for a reason, right? It's just karma.

But what if I changed my perspective on this?

Instead of deserving an incurable cancer, essentially a death sentence, maybe I need to look at this as simple bad luck.

I mean, it was simple good luck that I just so happened to not be working for the summer, and the reality is that if I had felt these symptoms that sent me to the hospital while I was teaching, I would have ignored them, because it is far too important to teach my weird awkward and awesome students how to write essays. My diagnosis would have been delayed. The fact that I did not have classes for the summer may very well have saved my life. Simple good luck.

So, sure, it is bad luck that I am one of the however many who get this particularly sh*tty form of cancer. But I don't deserve this bad luck. I don't think I deserve this bad luck.

If I don't deserve this, and this didn't happen for any reason other than bad luck, that leads me to decide that the universe is a chaotic place, and some people get hit by the chaos harder than others. The universe is not out to get me. I didn't deserve this. It isn't fair that this happened to me, to us. Sometimes, these things just happen. And I'm allowed to feel sad about that.

That's it.

So, I'm done with this book. It was really quite good, and I do recommend it. What book shall I read next?