The Fault in our Stars

I've just finished reading this fantastic book, written for young adults apparently, but I loved it!

On the surface its a tad depressing, with the main character telling the story while dying of cancer at the age of sixteen - well aware that the new drug she is on will prolong her life but not save it. She falls in love with Augustus Waters, also a victim of cancer and they grapple with life's issues together, while falling in love.

Hazel and Augustus both discuss the big questions of life (I've already spent a considerable time quoting the book on Twitter!) and I have found it brings up more questions than it answers.

I've always loved asking and debating the 'big' questions - particularly enjoying arguing my point until I win (I'm a tad competitive too!) but this book frustrated me because all the things I had thought I had settled in my mind have become unsettled.

The book questions the need to 'matter', to have meant something to someone else or to be important enough to be remembered - ultimately the purpose of life. If life is short, what is the most important thing if not to make a difference or to be able to declare to the world 'I was here'? The book argues or at least discusses the notion that no one is really remembered after they are dead; it points out that more people are dead now than are alive at the moment and when everyone around you is also dead - the notion of you, your being, is dead in conscious thought too (told you it was depressing!).

If there is no higher Being, no universal truth then what do we live for? Some would argue that humanity deserves to be treated with respect, that in the absence of Absolute Morality we decide what is right and wrong as culture and popular thought morphs and changes. We live to appreciate the 'gold' in life - art, music and nature as well as the frailty and beauty of human relationships. When we say that these things 'mean a great deal to us' we are saying that the "fleeting jolt of meaning" is transitory, that the only value of Art is in being able to pass the time as comfortably as possible. Do stories, art and music inspire us to change, emulate or just to simply 'be'?

Robert Frost writes about this in a poem: 'Nothing gold can stay'. Everything is transitory, our feelings of happiness and tragedy, nothing is felt permanently. We seek happiness and find we cannot keep ahold of it. Should we really be seeking to feel 'content' like St. Paul? Content in suffering as well as in great joy?

I have been told before that I will never be happy - and perhaps that is the real human struggle: the pursuit of happiness. We will perhaps never be happy as our 'voracious ambition... is never sated by dreams coming true, because there is always the thought that anything might be done better and again."