Shankar Vedantam

And now we just feel so lucky that he's healthy.

And as far as we know, he's cancer free.

So, it was a really tough time in our lives, but we came out the other side, and I think it just makes us more grateful for each other.

So Jonathan, Alison's story is clearly a redemption story, the way she's telling it.

But I'm wondering, is it possible that sometimes we need to let some time pass before we can see the redemption arc of a story?

When Alison and her husband were in the midst of dealing with this cancer, it's possible that it might have been harder to see the story through a redemptive lens.

Yeah, I imagine that's true, having talked with many cancer patients and their loved ones.

And indeed, I wonder if Allison and her husband felt pushed into sort of a cancer master narrative, which is really not about redemption at the beginning.

There's always the promise of redemption at the end.

But that kind of story really centers a different theme, which we call agency, right?

which is sort of the degree to which you are in the driver's seat of your life versus being batted around by external forces.

And again, these are themes and stories.

No one is completely in control of their life.

But the war story of cancer is a high agency story.

And sometimes when people are in the face of real existential threat, being reminded of your agency can feel good.

So I agree with you.

It's often hard to do redemption in the middle of negative experiences, though I think people feel pressure to do that all the time.

And so I often encourage people to resist the rush to redemption and to acknowledge the real awful parts of negative experiences before thinking about whether there's a redemptive end or not.

You talked a moment ago, Jonathan, about the importance of agency, and I want to just stay with this for a moment longer.

A lot of people feel bad things happen to me, and whether that's an illness or an injury or you lose a loved one or your home burns down, many of these things are external things that happen to us, and many of us then feel like we are effectively buffeted around by the winds of life.