On The Fault in Our Stars

SPOILER ALERT - IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE FAULT IN OUR STARS YET.  DO NOT READ THIS.  YOU WILL HATE ME, AND I DO NOT HANDLE REJECTION WELL.

I'M SERIOUS - STOP READING THIS AND GO READ THE BOOK.  YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO PUT IT DOWN.













The first thing that you need to know about me as a reader is that I do not cry at literary fiction.

It's a hard rule.

Disbelief gets suspended well enough, but I do not cry at things that are not actually so.

The next thing that you need to know about me is that I hate cancer more than just about anything.  My hate for it is not a theoretial thing.  My disdain is galvanized by the trials of those whom I hold dear who have suffered it's unrelenting physical and emotional deathroll.

I hate the idea of burying a member of my nuclear family more than I hate cancer.  Which is to say, I hate it the most.

As for the afforementioned nuclear family loss hatred, I can only offer a hypothetical first person narative.  However, my narative is well informed.  I walked with a very close friend through the unexpected death of his child (the word tragic is intentionally omitted, because it is a dumb word when used to describe the death of a child).  It was and remains to this day horrible.  No, it is worse than horrible.  It is the worst.  THE WORST.

The final thing that you need to know about me is that I have a deep faith in a very specific spiritual doctrine.  That faith did not grow to where it is now until well after the ages of the two main characters of John Green's book.





SPOILER ALERT UPDATE - SERIOUSLY, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS DECENT, STOP READING THIS IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK.  THIS WILL BE YOUR LAST SPOILER ALERT.








I cried.

Several times.

I'm crying right now thinking about several of the moments within the final few chapters of Augustus' and (presumably) Hazel Grace's lives.

So much for hard rules.

I'd never read a "cancer book" before this one.  I didn't want to read this one.  My wife and oldest daughter recommended it a long time ago.  I REALLY did not want to read it.  Reader's intuition I guess.  Ironically, it was an article written by Veronica Roth (Divergent Trilogy Author) about her literary inspirations that finally got me to turn the first page.  Damn you Roth!

My initial reaction to the story's conclusion was equal parts adoration and abhoration.  Then I fell asleep.

When I woke up, the recurring question in my head was "why?".  There is no way that you write a story like this without an answer to "why?".

I'm talking about the big "why?"  The "why?" that keeps you from falling asleep after you read about two teenagers who find each other in the middle of the worst possible circumstances, fall in love, only for one of them to die without seeing all of the things that young love aspires to see.

I repeat, damn you Roth!

Anyway, the book's answer to that "why?" seemed to hint at the importance of not letting your circumstances dictate your inability to (as they spoke about in the "Literal Heart of Jesus") live your best life today.  This sentiment came together in the climactic pre-funeral eulogy that Gus asked Hazel to write for him:

"I can't talk about our love story, so I will talk about math.  I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1.  There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others.  Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million.  Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.  A writer we used to like taught us that.  There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set.  I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got.  But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity.  I wouldn't trade it for the world.  You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful"

I really cried after I read that.

The sentiment of gratitude for something amidst the backdrop of that something being stolen is laudable if not perfect.  But, it begs the question.  What happens when you get from 0 to 1 and the infinity between the two reveals itself for the fallacy that it is.

I am a slave to logic, and the logic within the eulogy is flawed.  Beautifully flawed.

I hate myself for thinking that. I mean we're talking about teenagers who are going to die after all.

Still, there is no "infinity" (mathematical or otherwise) that we can experience while stuck in the throws of a finite temporal existence.  Everything that we know is marked by time.  And, time is winding down for all of us. 

I really hate myself for that one.

Look, I'm not a callous man.  I really am not.

I believe that there is an infinity, but I believe that infinity is not found within the bounds of our humanity.  I believe our humanity causes the waters of faith to get really murky when you lose someone.  Especially if that someone has seen all of your brokeness and depravity and chooses to love you all the more for it or (even more heart breaking) in spite of it.  I believe that we should, in fact, live our best lives today, but never lose sight that our humanity...that same humanity that is prisoner to time's march from 0 to 1...points to something else.  Something bigger. Something that puts "why?" in it's place.

Our humanity informs us that our ability to relate, rightly or wrongly, to everything and everyone around us is what separates us from the stars.  In fact, our ability to gaze in awe at the stars and contemplate how we might relate to them, faults and all, points to an embedded purpose in every one of us.  Love is the best example of this purpose.

But, in order for a purpose to be embedded, there has to have been an answer to "why?" before the embedding took place.  An author of infinity perhaps.

I wish more than anything Gus and Hazel Grace could have known that infinity does not end. 

It is not bound by the dictates of time and space as we know it. 

I wish they knew that the author of love created infinity.  And, that love is the only logical answer to "why?"

I wish...