SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Duke divinity professor Kate Bowler was 35 years old when she was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer. And she started noticing all the ways people tried to show up for her when something bad happens. Friends and family try to find the bright side, but there were lessons to be learned from hard things. Or that when something bad happens, it's just part of a universal plan. She wrote a bestselling memoir about that experience called "Everything Happens For A Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved." Since then, she started a podcast called "Everything Happens," and she explores how what she calls toxic positivity shapes the way we talk about difficult things. Bowler sat down with Rachel Martin on Wild Card to answer questions about her life pulled from a deck of cards. Here's Rachel.
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RACHEL MARTIN: One, two or three.
KATE BOWLER: One.
MARTIN: One- what do you wish you could let go of?
BOWLER: I would love to let go of always - well, I mean, I think it's something I write about all the time 'cause I'm always really struggling with it - is that cultural insistence that we always have to be getting better. I'd love to give up the idea that in every area of my life I'm supposed to, you know, come the new year, always have this New Year's moment. But I always end up looking at my life like it's some kind of quadrant with, you know, progress and...
MARTIN: Yeah.
BOWLER: ...Mostly dramatic and sudden failures (laughter). And so I just - I am always accidentally measuring - measuring, measuring, measuring, measuring. And I don't think that's - I think we're supposed to get worse at some things because we're not paying any attention to it, and we found something better to focus on.
MARTIN: Yeah.
BOWLER: I wish for everyone that they didn't wake up and think about how much they weigh in the morning. I mean...
MARTIN: I know.
BOWLER: ...Just what a waste of time.
MARTIN: Yeah, yeah.
BOWLER: Waste of a good woman over here. It's just caring.
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MARTIN: Yeah. So now I go one step deeper and ask you to share, if you would be willing to, what's a thing that you find yourself measuring yourself with or against that you want to release?
BOWLER: There's a way of measuring a day that I've been trying desperately to stop doing, and I can't seem to do it. And it's - I think it was probably the first time I really started thinking about efficiency and treating my life like a Ford Motor Company. But when I wake up in the day, I know exactly how many hours it takes me to do some of the most important things that I want to do. Like, I know exactly how long writing should take me for a certain number of words. And that was - that served me really well when I had cancer. I mean, I was like, Kate, this is the amount of time I have, this is the amount of energy I have - like, how do I spend my life? But the metaphor of spending is really corrosive.
MARTIN: Yeah.
BOWLER: So then I find it much more difficult to actually focus on some of the really lovely things that I actually need in my life that are not very measurable, like I don't read not useful things very often because I'm always trying to put in the time it takes to make the thing I want to make. And so the only way I have, I think, a lot of growth in that area is friends. I can spend an - like, I will waste my life with my friends all day long. But when it comes to me, I would love to have more just, like, uncounted, completely wasted, doesn't-matter time.
MARTIN: Yeah.
BOWLER: And I'm so judgy, so judgy, with myself. I would - I don't have - I have only hopeful feelings that other people will waste their time, but I find it almost impossible for me to waste my time. And I think just I got worse like this when I got sick. And now I'm an efficiency monster, and I can't undo it.
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MARTIN: OK, three more cards - one, two or three?
BOWLER: Three.
MARTIN: Do you think there's any part of us that lives on after we die?
BOWLER: Yes, 100%. Absolutely.
MARTIN: Which part?
BOWLER: The eyeballs, mostly.
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BOWLER: They're the last to decompose. I mean, it's so funny. There's a - I have - do you have a - if you're ever interested in having a favorite poet mortician, I have one. His name is Thomas Lynch.
MARTIN: A poet mortician?
BOWLER: Yeah. He - by day, mortician. By night, very good poet.
MARTIN: That is a fascinating combo. I can hear it.
BOWLER: And he's a lot of fun to talk about this question with about, like, what remains and the, like - and even a way, like, 'cause, you know, there's all the stuffness (ph) of our bodies, but there's this, like, incredible durability to how we think about the soul. And really, it's even in just how we remember people - like, what made them this and not that? Like, what odd specificity, like, made that person's laugh and made that, like, wicked part of their sense of humor? And I just think there's this delicious, distilled absurdity, this, like, tragic comedy that is us, and I think that is pressed into the rare diamond that is our soul. We just - that gets to - that just gets to live forever.
MARTIN: How much does your son know about your diagnosis, and do you talk to him about death and what that looks like and what happens after people die - what would happen after you died?
BOWLER: I always tried to be really - I mean, Zach is like the bull's-eye of my heart. He's, like, the core of the core. And I think I was most nervous about anything related to my illness or death or even just other people talking about heaven because I really wanted to be super careful about how he understood...
MARTIN: Yeah.
BOWLER: ...I mean, kind of what we believe as Christians, but also whether he should be scared for me, his mom. And so I always bought these little, like, dolls with, like, anatomical organs. And I was like, right now, I have a mistake in this (laughter) - and then we'd, like, take it out and be like, this is a colon. Just, like, I found that the more, like, concrete and physical and specific I got, it would feel like just the - death being a failure of your organs. All those things would feel a lot easier for him to understand.
MARTIN: Yeah.
BOWLER: And so I've always been really careful about how sick he believes that I am at any time.
MARTIN: Yeah, yeah.
BOWLER: But I've always wanted him to know in every version, like, this God we love means that when it comes to love, we will never be apart. And also, I don't want to go anywhere in which I can't smell your skin and feel your ridiculous chubby hand on my face and watch you accidentally lock yourself in handcuffs and walk past my office 200 times while I'm working (laughter). Like, there's - so I've always been so disappointed by stories of the afterlife 'cause it is not - it's not a story of putting Zach to bed.
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MARTIN: Kate Bowler is a New York Times bestselling author, professor at the Divinity School at Duke, and she is the host of the podcast "Everything Happens." Kate, thank you so much.
BOWLER: Oh, my gosh, my pleasure.
DETROW: To hear more of that conversation, you can follow the Wild Card podcast. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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