"You are as alive as anybody else"

If you’ve heard of The Fault in Our Stars, the recently released movie based on John Green’s bestselling book, you’ve probably heard that it’s about teenagers with cancer. And while this is true—the main characters, Gus and Hazel, meet in a teenage cancer support group—one of the movie’s greatest triumphs is not letting the characters be defined by their cancer.

Green spent six months as a volunteer chaplain at a children’s hospital after college, when he was considering becoming a priest. Although he claims to have been an awful chaplain, The Fault in Our Stars is in part a reflection of what he learned. The experience left him with the distinct impression that we misunderstand and therefore mistreat the terminally ill.

When I saw Green speak last fall, he said he was tired of books and movies about sickness in which “the sick people only exist to teach healthy people lessons.” Sick people usually die in that type of book, he said, so that their friends and family cn learn to appreciate the everyday.