Books To Help You Exist Right Now
Because we could use all the help we can get
The world is a lot. We could all use a little help — not just coping, but thriving. That’s why I started a podcast called Help Existing, and write about things like how to deal with despair over the state of the world, how to counteract your negativity bias, and how to confront your fear of death. I write about these topics not because I’m an expert, but because it is one of the best ways to keep myself on track.
Reading is also one of the main ways I make sense of being alive. While every book that touches me in some way helps me exist, the picks below are books that have recently and consistently left a useful impression on my day-to-day life. I hope they help you too. I’ve also included a few podcast episodes that pair well with some of the books, in case you want extra credit.
What books have helped you exist? Please let me know in the comments — I’m always looking for new recommendations.
Your True Home
Out of all the fantastic books on this list, this is the one I look at every day, for years now. With one teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh for each day of the year, you can practice little bit by bit. You can even look at each page as a sort of daily “fortune,” if that motivates you. Or you can open it at random and practice viewing life through that day’s lens. Most teachings are just a sentence or two, and the longest one you’ll find is a paragraph. They add up to 365 Buddhist and mindfulness concepts. I keep it open on top of my bookshelf, and each day I turn the page to look at that day’s instruction or idea. This book is deeply, deeply helpful.
Quote: “The practice of mindfulness doesn’t forbid us to plan for the future. It’s best not to lose ourselves in uncertainty and fear over the future, but if we’re truly established in the present moment, we can bring the future to the here and the now, and make plans. We’re not losing the present moment when we think about the future. In fact, the present moment contains both past and future. The only material that the future is made of is the present. If you know how to handle the present in the best way you can, that’s all you can do for the future. Handling the present moment with all your attention, all your intelligence, is already building a future.”
We Were Made For These Times
This succinct book by meditation teacher Kaira Jewel Lingo is a practical and comforting manual for a world falling apart, in part because it points out that every moment is falling apart. Lingo is a close student of the late Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, and she carries forth his teachings in a unique and fresh way, applying a contemporary social justice lens and her own experience as a Black woman. This is a highly practical little book for navigating times of transition. I was particularly moved by the image of her description of walking meditation that I’ve quoted below. Like other practices in the book, I find myself returning to it. If you need a little hope right now — or simply some better coping mechanisms — this is a nourishing and easy summer read.
Quote: “These deeper life questions can’t be resolved at the level of the mind, but must be entrusted to a different, deeper part of our consciousness. Thay suggests we consider this big question as a seed, plant it in the soil of our mind, and let it rest there. Our mindfulness practice in our daily lives is the sunshine and water that the seed needs to sprout so that one day it will rise up on its own, in its own time. And then we’ll know the answer to our question without a doubt. But we must leave the seed down in the soil of our mind and not keep digging it up to see if it is growing roots. It won’t grow that way!
It is the same with a deep and troubling question. We ask our deeper consciousness to take care of it, and let go of our thinking and worrying about it. Then in our daily lives we practice calming, resting, and coming home to ourselves in the present moment, and that will help the seed of our question to ripen naturally and authentically. This process cannot be rushed or forced. It may take weeks, months, or years.”
Buy We Were Made For These Times here.
Four Thousand Weeks
This is probably one of the most impactful books I’ve read. It is also not difficult to read. For those of us who tend to live in the future, who fear missing out, and always seem to be keeping ourselves busy to justify our existence, this is the reframe you need. This is an anti-productivity “time management” book — one that makes you face the fact that the average human lifespan is just, you guessed it, 4,000 weeks. Given you’ve likely gone through half of that already, how do you want to spend the rest? Burkeman’s suggestion is that you don’t fall into a bucket-list maximizer tendency, but instead admit you will never succeed on all the levels you hope to. This is a deeply, deeply helpful book.
Quote: “A life spent focused on achieving security with respect to time, when in fact such security is unattainable, can only ever end up feeling provisional—as if the point of your having been born still lies in the future, just over the horizon, and your life in all its fullness can begin as soon as you’ve gotten it, in Arnold Bennett’s phrase, “into proper working order.”
Once you’ve cleared the decks, you tell yourself; or once you’ve implemented a better system of personal organization, or got your degree, or invested a sufficient number of years in honing your craft; or once you’ve found your soulmate or had kids, or once the kids have left home, or once the revolution comes and social justice is established—that’s when you’ll feel in control at last, you’ll be able to relax a bit, and true meaningfulness will be found. Until then, life necessarily feels like a struggle: sometimes an exciting one, sometimes exhausting, but always in the service of some moment of truth that’s still in the future.”
How To Break Up With Your Phone
This is an incredibly useful little book that I can’t stop recommending to all my friends. The first section scares you straight about how smartphones are changing our brains; the second part provides potential solutions, and the third provides a 30-day plan for you to detox. Written for short attention spans, this is really a fantastic guide for resetting your relationship with your phone, social media, and attention span. And despite its name, it doesn’t require you to give up your phone altogether. Think of this as taking a 30-day break to reevaluate your relationship and come back together less codependent.
Quote: “One of the hardest parts about changing your relationship with your phone is having to constantly say no to invitations sent by your own brain. For example: “Oh hi. I see that you just woke up. Want to look at your phone to see if anyone messaged you while you were sleeping?” “It looks like you might be about to try to meditate. How about we just check social media for a second first?”
…Whenever you notice that you’re itching to check something — email, social media, text messages, the news, whatever — ask yourself some simple questions: What’s the best thing that could happen as a result of your checking? What’s the best email you could receive? The best piece of news? The best notification? What’s the best emotion that you could experience?”
Buy How To Break Up With Your Phone here.
Human Virtuality and Digital Life
Continuing on the theme of how technology is changing our minds is this (very different) book. This is an academic and ambitious read with a big payoff. It addresses how digital technology affects our existential experience. What do phones have to do with shame, power, narcissism, and death? Is there really even a difference between the virtual and the real? Why are we not more comforted by our phones when we’re addicted to them?
This book (and my accompanying interview with its authors above) delves into all these questions and more, thinking about technology on both a philosophical and psychoanalytic level. This was a fascinating read that will make you feel like you’re back in college, and from which you might emerge more able to view the modern age with a curious and inquiring distance.
Quote: “The drive toward the cyber-realization of desire aggravates our relation to desire’s lack. Because of the unending virtual availability of what we most desire, that we can have as much of exactly what we want, without interference, we are tricked by the seductive promise of the erasure of lack, that desire can be truly and finally satisfied. We can’t stop looking. We can’t stop searching. We can’t stop believing that we will ultimately find the right combination of sounds and images that will fully extinguish our desire. But in the end, we are entrapped by the masochistic search for the ever elusive object.”
Buy Human Virtuality and Digital Life here.
Devotions
Whenever I return to the poems of Mary Oliver, I’m reminded of what really matters, and instructed in the art of existence. Her savoring of nature and the animals living in it is a guide to recognizing interconnectedness. She describes the ineffable by communicating a feeling impressionistically, as good poetry does. This anthology, arranged by the late Oliver itself, is a bible and a roadmap.
Quote: “Like clouds that only seem weightless / But of course are not. / Are really important. / I mean, terribly important. / Not decoration by any means. / By next week the violets will be blooming. / Anyway, this was my delicious walk in the rain. / What was it actually about? / Think about what it is that music is trying to say. / It was something like that.”
