Notes On A Nervous Planet: 7 Key Takeaways for a Better Life!
5 days ago I went to the city’s library and while seeking a book for my friend I ran across this one: Notes On A Nervous Planet. It caught my attention and I couldn’t help but get it. It’s my first book for 2021 and it was totally worth the read. Although it sounded more like a long blog post rather than a book, it had some concepts inside that are important for our time.
Here 7 key takeaways from my perspective.
Let’s start with the first one:
1. The current reality can easily plunge you into depression
The author himself went through depression while and before writing this book. Hence, he relates to his life experiences throughout the book often. He compares the views people have about certain conditions such as depression and what are the main causes of it.
It all comes down to the reality we are surrounded by. Now, through social media is easy to quarrel with people you’ll probably never meet and yet, leave them to affect your mental health. We live in a disconnected world where interaction with other human beings becomes less frequent, leaving us to build our own reality full of misery and depression.
Spaces such as supermarkets can become a source of depression for someone who feels insecure about his decisions, and confused by all the messy surroundings, objects, clerks trying to lure you into buying and the promotional voice that speaks to you all the way around.
2. We live in a world where the lack of things is sold to us
“On a daily basis we are sold unhappiness because happiness is not good for the economy.”
— Matt Haig
Think about it: if you were satisfied with your current life situation, with your smartphone, with your home, with your TV, heck, even with your girlfriend, who would buy all the stuff they are producing? Why would everyone strive to make more money and get the next new thing that is coming out?
We’ve been programmed since childhood to totally focus on tomorrow and pay little attention to the present moment. The coming test, the major exams, the job, the house, the family. As soon as you learn to speak, they start asking you “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and since then, you start to feel anxious about your future.
But why should we keep our heads filled with thoughts about tomorrow? Tomorrow is just an abstract concept. It doesn’t exist. It’s nothing but a combination of Nows.
3. Technology is crumbling us because we let it to
And here comes technology into play. An enemy or an ally? We make the choice. Although we are pushed into having a toxic relationship with technology, it can be used for the better as long as we control the time we spend and don’t become dependent on it.
Technology is taking people’s jobs and employers are taking people’s weekends. It can be true that there are fewer poor people than a few decades ago, but the distinction between the poor and the rich is becoming more prominent. The middle classes are almost disappearing and if you don’t catch up with the standards of new tech, you’ll find it hard to put food on the table.
From mental illnesses to unemployment, technology is making major steps against us. You shouldn’t be surprised if in the near future your smart toaster controls you, along with the other army of your “smart devices”. We either learn to use tech or let it use us.
4. We are breathing in the future while grounded in the present
We become trapped in the future and we become trapped in other people’s opinions as much as we forget the human body we inhabit. How wonderful and unique we are and how we are forced to hate the actual version of ourselves?
Matt mentions a study made by a famous psychologist who says that a woman who feels ashamed of her weight and body is more relieved when she learns to embrace the way she is rather than when she gets to look the way others want to or the ideal version she has pictured into her mind.
This is because the body itself feels the contradiction. Again, the way beauty is perceived by the masses comes from meaningless ego and consumerism. Marketing always aims to make you feel bad about who you are now. “You’ll be better if you buy this!” No, you’ll be better if you accept the way you are!
One of the directors of British Vogue magazine, Lucinda Chambers, after leaving the position she had held for 25 years, said that fashion magazines are becoming less and less about empowering people. These magazines have become more about convincing people to buy stuff they don’t need.
Don’t you think the time has arrived for this to come to an end?
5. We’re giving others permission to hurt us
One of the chapters starts out with the words Hamlet says to Rosencrantz:
“There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
— William Shakespeare, Hamlet.
Moles in your face can make feel ugly only if you think they make you ugly. Control the way you think and you’ll be in charge of the material put out to affect your well-being. We often think about ourselves from the viewpoint of others but not from within. We live in our bodies like foreigners!
Do you really feel bad about not having the six-pack or eight-pack abs, or do you just think others don’t like you because of that? Do you really feel bad about your being, or simply observe yourself from the eyes of others? If “yes”, let me tell you this: No one cares how you look. People care only about themselves. You care about yourself the same way everyone does. Then, why worry about transforming yourself into a version to be loved by them?
Years of progress have brought innovation in technology, but have left us behind in innovating as beings, or better, keeping up with our values. Our ego takes us over and our attitude towards problems causes nothing but harm.
6. How to stay well on the internet?
Too much freedom can harm us, and the internet guarantees plenty of it. After just a simple cough, you anxiously jump on Google to search your symptoms for hours. Hours! Self-diagnosing yourself, you’ll find it hard to go on with your day because your mind becomes cluttered with loads of information that cause you to think you’ll be dead by dinner!
Limit the time you spend seeking answers you know you can’t find. This is only going to fill you with anxiety and lose time creating improbable scenarios. Unlearn the habits you’ve sunk into. Unlearn to check your phone each second for new notifications. Would the world crumble if you check your phone three times a day instead of thirty?
7. The power of having access to virality
We both know how easy is to go viral on the internet today. Times before the internet, the mass media had everything in hand when it came to information that was spread. People watched the news no more than three times per day and that’s all they had.
They were calm and focused on what they were doing for the rest of the day. They had more time to think about their loved ones because there were no Facebook statuses to check for likes. No one could harm, mentally speaking, unless they were a few meters close to you and if it happened, the issue would be resolved within minutes because everything could be said face to face.
There was less time for overthinking daily situations because things were more accessible. People were less informed, but they were better. They may have had physical pain, but it was more bearable than the mental pain we go through now. Overall, we were disconnected. Now, it’s the opposite.
Is this to say that technology is our enemy and we should go back to living in caves? Not necessarily. We just have to take control. Not the state or the government, but us, all of us.
With just a simple smartphone and an internet connection, you can speak to millions of people. Everyone has access to virality, as long as he has a message that resonates with people to share. Things can multiply at a scary rate in the world of bits. Starting from emotions, where the bad ones dominate, such as: anxiety, depression, fake news, fear, insecurities and up to funny cat videos and simple acts of kindness.
What is worrying here is the rate at which your heart has to bounce from one emotion to the other. From feeling sorrow for kids dying from hunger in Africa, to a couple who got married in a corner of Bali. Emotions are so flashy, that we’re not impressed anymore, therefore losing the sense of being human.
The kiss, the touch, breathing the fresh air without our mind racing to pick the smartphone to take a picture. Without the external world making us feel like strangers to our own internal world.
Final Thoughts
There are millions of books out there. This is something the author writes about too. Once there were people who had read all the printed books in the world (when they weren’t more than 40). Now, this is relatively impossible. But you don’t need to read all of them. You just need to read the right ones.
And I believe the right ones are those that make you understand and feel what’s wrong, leading us to a better life.
At the end of this article, I’m leaving a treat for you, in case you want to read the book. (This, thanks, to the right use of the internet.) Here you can download the PDF version of Notes On A Nervous Planet for free.
Thank you for reading until the end because this is the longest article you’ve read so far from me! Hope you’ll love the book too!
