Without a fuck!
This article is written without giving much fucks, that I would normally give while writing something on Medium. Read on to know why.
This article is written without giving much fuck about its structure. Without giving a fuck about how to beautify the article, get good images, have a good flow.
But I was compelled to think about why I came on Medium in the first place. It’s a post for another time but in short: I wanted to write. But where has it gotten me? Nine posts till now! That too are reviews about movies that no one knows about (Why I give such random movie reviews is also a possible article of future!) And tens of probable articles that got lost somewhere in my mind or in scribbles in my notes or the draft. Maybe just like the above one in the parentheses.
Why this post?
I am halfway through the book, “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck” by the author Mark Manson. That’s right. I am here because I liked the idea. I am not going to think about anyone else who read this article. I will not think about the correlation between the topics and I will write naturally. And as the most difficult part with that would be to select an appropriate heading, which by grace has already been thought of.
Just do plain boring writing; to voice my thoughts. That’s it.
What I really like reading in non-fiction?
I love stories. Examples. Real-life examples and stories really bring in another dimension to the non-fiction books.
There are many exceptional books that take these stories and make them a case study. Many such case studies make the core of the book. To summarize, those authors learned something from real life and want to tell others.
I personally love such books. Mostly because they are fun to read. Very fun and interesting. Two top books on my list would be “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell and “The Culture Code” by Daniel Coyle.
How was the read?
It was a mind-boggling read for me.
Incredibly hard for me to stick through its chapters. “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck” is one of the slowest reads I have done since I started reading.
One of the reasons for that is I tried Speedreading. Tried after I have seen some videos on Speedreading on Youtube, read some blogs. And oh boy, it made me the slowest reader I have ever been. Then, I tried shutting it off but it won’t go from my conscious mind.
Anyways, Speedreading would also make a good topic for an interesting article some other time. But in short: I sucked reading this book.
Is the book really that difficult?
No, possibly not. It would score as one of the easier to read books on most people’s list. Especially if you have enough practice devouring Paulo Coelho and Robin Sharma.
As I explained above, I like stories in a non-fiction book. Mark Manson, the author of the book did a good job of bringing in stories throughout the book. Both from his personal life and otherwise. Sometimes, multiple stories throughout a chapter.
He uses a story to demonstrate a fact or an argument. The stories are particularly easy to read and interesting.
What was difficult for me was what followed the stories. His statements. Which needs reflection and is not something you can read off like reading a novel. They were difficult. My mind kept wandering off to tens of places while reading just one sentence.
However, this is my personal experience. You might or might not face it. Do let me know about your personal experience of reading it.
A correlation from the book
If you go above and read the first paragraph, you will see that I judged myself. You see. My metric for judging myself was the number of articles written till now on Medium. I did not even realize when I wrote it. Only afterward, I noticed that I judged my self as a failure. Of course, in my metrics.
So, here are a few things from the book:
Happiness alone doesn’t cut it!
Only when you solve a problem, you get true happiness. So, important thing is not to avoid problem, but to find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving.
Two things can disturb the above-said practice of finding happiness while solving problems:
- Denial: of existence of the problems
- Victim Mentality
Own your problems
The billions of people on earth have gazillion problems in their lives. Everyone has some problems. Rich and the poor. Dictator and the Prime Minister. Educated and the blue-collar workers.
Everyone has problems. You are not special.
It’s impossible to not have problems. What’s important is to own your problems. Something bad happened, happened. The thing that matters now is how you react to it. To respond to it, you have to first acknowledge it. That means to own your problem. Whimpering like a kid about why it always happens with you is taking you nowhere. An example of William James in the book is an interesting one. How he wanted his whole life being depressed and being compared while fighting with numerous physiological problems. At one point, he even thought to end his life. Fun fact: he went to be known as the father of American Psychology.
So, own your problems. And the journey of coming out of it is worthwhile.
List of problem-creating shitty values
- Pleasure (pleasure is not the cause of happiness but the effect)
- Material success (if you have food, clothing, and home, rest don’t matter)
- Always being right (don’t be a jackass and assume you know everything)
- Staying positive (you should accept the negative emotions)
There I go.
Wrote it. Wrote this article without thinking about what other people will think of it. Because I don’t give a fuck.
