Living our best life today

Living our best life today is the closing mantra of the Support Group that Hazel Grace Lancaster attends every Wednesday in the basement of an Episcopal church. The phrase is recited in unison by the group at the end of each meeting, immediately after Patrick, the Support Group Leader, finishes a long prayer that includes a list of the dead. Hazel describes the mantra as "stupid," and her narration makes clear that she regards it as a hollow, almost absurdly cheerful slogan that bears no relation to the reality of living with cancer. The ritual is part of the group's routine: after holding hands and praying, everyone says the words together before the meeting officially ends. The phrase appears again later in the novel, at a Support Group meeting after Augustus Waters's death, when Hazel attends and the group once more recites the mantra. By that point, the words carry an even sharper irony, as Hazel is grieving the loss of the boy she loved and is herself struggling with the worsening of her own disease. The mantra thus functions as a recurring marker of the gap between the Support Group's prescribed optimism and the actual experience of the young cancer patients who attend, a gap that Hazel consistently refuses to paper over.