I'm Kate Boehler and this is Everything Happens.

I'm a historian, author, aggressively fast walker, but lately in a world that promises endless

progress, even now in a pandemic, I've realized I just need to be a person.

It's hard to give up on the feeling that the life you want is just out of reach, if

only you tried.

Make this food, find that relationship, just get the kids graduated or the parents this

kind of care.

Only then will I feel different, better, whole.

But that's not the way this works.

When I was 35, I was diagnosed with stage war cancer, and here's the very fun thing

about that.

The world loves you better when you are shiny, when you are cheerful, when you still

believe that your best life now is right around the corner.

I've written multiple books on the history of the idea that you can always fix your life,

so I'm going to be the one to say it.

There are some things we can change and some things we can't, and it's okay that life

isn't always getting better.

We can have beauty and meaning, community and love, and we will need each other if we're

going to tell the truth.

Life is a chronic condition, and there's no cure for being human.

Starting when I was about 12, I began to be a special part of helping people commit

their lives to one another, to pledge their trough, as some liturgies read, to get hitched.

...