Kate Bowler and the Rogue Limbs
Dear Friends,
Kate Bowler was not yet a Divinity professor when her arms stopped working. She was a mere grad student working on her dissertation. I should also qualify that her arms didn't stop working 100% of the time. They would unexpectedly go limp, and then they'd start working again.
It's not clear just how much time she spent without the use of her arms. Even if it was just 10%, that's still really bad. That's like saying the steering wheel of your car works 90% of the time. It's hard to work around that. "Well, I guess I'll just go straight until I can steer again. I'm good. Lunch'll be the melted and resolidified protein bar that I keep at the bottom of my center console for just such occasions."
After reading Kate's book, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved, I realized two things.
First, Kate and I are polar opposites:
She's Canadian. I'm American.
She was raised by pure Mennonites. I was raised by HBO and Atari.
She's a professor of Divinity. I've been stuck on page 1 of the Bible for, um, a while now.
The second thing is that we arrived at a similar conclusion despite being polar opposites. Not everything needs to be explained. Some things - a lot of things, actually - are the result of random chance. They require no more explanation than the last time you rolled a D6 and it came up 1.
I had a coworker who was confined to a wheelchair. I'll call him Swanson, because I watch Family Guy and because me and Swanson don't keep in touch. One day we were talking and the topic of his disability came up, so I asked him what happened. He said that he had been walking outside and a heavy tree limb fell on him. It had been weakened by a recent storm and gave out just as he had been passing underneath. It was a freak accident.
We seem to have a deep desire to explain, to classify, to put things into neat little boxes. We often tell stories of triumph and redemption as a way to make sense of all the uncomfortable bullshit that we've gone through. "This bad thing happened but it's actually a good thing because it made me a better person." I mean, I guess so. Sometimes. Like, it's a good thing I didn't get that job after being late to the interview. It made me learn to leave extra time. Now I'm not late for job interviews and I find completely new ways to screw them up!
There's no such lesson in Swanson's story. A bough of a freakin' tree crushed him. As he was pinned to the ground, do you think he cried with joy? "Oh, what luck! I will learn and grow so much as a person because of this! Finally, the break I was waiting for!" No, he probably dropped a steady stream of obscenities until someone helped him.
And that's the point. Someone helped him. A physical therapist helped Kate (after dozens of doctors couldn't). A few years after she got her arms back full time, she was diagnosed with colorectal cancer, underwent several surgeries, and wound up with five belly buttons. It sucked but she kept going and got lots of help, just like my coworker Swanson did. We don't always need explanations, but we do need one another.
Keep Going,
Geoff
Notes
Kate Bowler can be found on the web, which has her podcast, books, and a bunch of other stuff.
Photo by dcwcreations on Shutterstock.
Parting Thought
Someone sent me this article, A Toast to all the Rejects, about a group of academics who shared the rejection letters they received as they applied for jobs, grants, etc. Seeing how many times your peers get rejected helps blunt the sting of the rejections that you receive, which seem more personal and tailored to you (they’re not - rejection letters are a classic cut and paste job).
It’s a great idea, and it’s worth spelling out explicitly - rejection isn’t failure. If anything, it’s a necessary step on the path to success.