Thoughts on The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

Perhaps it’s like John Green says: “we are as invincible as we believe ourselves to be.”

Sometimes I question why I believe this. There are some things in this world set in place that limit us to failure. There are some things, to be honest, a lot of things, which are out of our control. These things will happen regardless of our actions or attitude. I agree with Peter van Houten when is says that the “fault” may very well be in our stars rather than ourselves. But society tells you otherwise. Professors, mentors, coaches, parents; They all tell you that 99 percent of what happens to you is because of you or one of the many aspects in your life that you can, in fact, control.

Well I disagree. This is not to say that I don’t believe in trying your hardest, setting goals, or attempting to change a bad situation. I do not think that we are hopeless dandelion seeds floating through time and space… that’s not my point whatsoever. However, I do think that we hate to think of ourselves as creatures that lack control. It pains us to know that what we do may very well be “pointless” or that “it doesn’t really matter.”

We tend to overestimate the amount of impact and control we actually have. I don’t believe we have much to do with what happens to us, but that does not necessarily mean we should stop buying into the fact that we do. It is a huge part of what drives us forward to think and accomplish great things.

And yet after all this ranting on our supposed lack of control, I still do believe that we are as invincible as we believe ourselves to be. We are something bigger than the sum of our parts. Our genes, our bodies, our minds, our words and our accomplishments are all part of us but these “parts” do not equal a human being. We are something more, something that only we, as human beings, can recognize in each other. To me this implies that there is more. There is so much beyond what even the sharpest of eyes can make out. And so we all remain utterly blind to it, whatever it is.

Perhaps it is up to us to use this blindness as a leap of faith and stumble into this false belief of invincibility. For it may in fact be that small unreachable piece in each of us that is greater than the sum of our parts that has the ability to remain invincible through the most painful of times. But the existence of suffering, my friend, is a completely different and utterly unanswerable story.