The One Book to Actually Give a Fuck About

Sahiba Bhatia
Aug 25, 2017 · 4 min read

Sometimes a book is so good that you can’t put it down. You love everything in it. You gradually savor it, taking your time, torn between completing it too quickly and wanting to quickly reach the end.

Some are the ones you simply hate. The book that is morosely lying unfinished in your shelf with only a couple chapters read because you didn’t find it interesting enough or didn’t agree on the point it was trying to make.

Then, there are also the ones that you both love and hate simultaneously. They blatantly point out some run-of-the-mill faults in people and you are left with a strange chord of recognition. You try to reject it because initially no one wants to accept their mistakes. Especially not the ones they have been repeatedly committing. You loathe the book for drawing the curtain from your naive eyes. You want to hurl it in the garbage. But you can’t, because sooner or later you have to face the reality, the demon in you. So you peruse it further, swallowing your vanity as you read about the errors that you have been making all your life. These books are your realist, blunt friends.

I completed ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck’ with somewhat of this love-hate reaction. The purchase of the book was one of my desperate moves to hold on to something to distract my idle, unemployed mind. My going-crazy-per-microsecond-and-replete-with-useless-thoughts mind.

Not being so much into non-fiction, I didn’t have any high hopes from this one. I’d already heard about the author, Mark Manson, from a friend who had for months been suggesting his world famous blogs to me. I’d scanned some of his blogs, but didn’t find anything phenomenal in them. Maybe it was because in the back of my mind, I had already dismissed them as mainstream hyperboles.

But the book, unlike his blogs, came like a knight in shining armour in my life. A bright, orange colored armour. But unlike the dogma, this knight didn’t save me. Instead, he just hoisted me up and bluntly pointed out why I was falling repeatedly. He kindly dusted me off and listed out the mistakes that I desperately needed to shed. He offered me a cool drink while calmly advising me to accept that life is mostly shitty. And, most of all, he took me in his arms, looked deep into my eyes and declared that I incessantly give fucks about petty things and that this must be stopped immediately. In short, this knight reminded me that it is high time I save myself.

The book doesn’t proffer anything that hasn’t been preached before. All it does it that it explains the primitive theories in a less-non-fiction-and-more-relatable-and-friendly-manner. Even though it is targeted at an audience of every age, I think it speaks specifically to the millennials. The generation that regularly thrives on social media to attain a rush of serotonin, to get that short-term high. And they said alcohol was harmful.

Short-term highs are stressed about a lot in the book. Maybe Manson realized how much people rely on toxic forms of instant gratification these days, more than our elders did in their time.

The most wonderful piece of advice that I found in the book was something like this: What goes around us may or may not be our fault. But we are most definitely responsible for how we react to it.

I, for one, have been involuntarily dependent all my life. On people, things, stimulants, etc. In fact, I think it was a bit voluntary as well. And this dependence on short-term ‘highs’ has not helped me in any way to be strong, mentally or physically.

Now, I can do one thing and blame others for my inbuilt dependence. Or I can take a page of the book and hold myself responsible for my crappy response to everything. I can change my outlook to things. I can start by making small changes in my routine. I can make my own freaking cup of tea. I can probably start procrastinating my recurrent procrastination , rather than anything else. I can start focusing more aggressively on what I actually want to do in life. And I can, and must, stop waiting for a knight to come and rescue me.

You might think that the book in itself is a short-term high. But that’s where you are wrong. The book will not solve any of your problems. Some may even find the author reiterating things that they already know. Well, then I think these people already have the rudimentary approach to life sorted. Unlike some of us, they already know when/where/how a fuck should be given.For the rest of us, the anxiety-driven and struggling to get of their deep rut, this book is like a rope thrown into the rut.

But that’s it. It is just a means to get out of the dark hole.

Because then, it is our choice what action we take. Like the book says, “We are always choosing”. So, it is up to us whether we ignore the rope, apprehensive that it’ll break off with our weight.

Or we grab hold of it and diligently climb out, no matter how difficult.

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Sahiba Bhatia

Written by

Firm believer of Phil’s-osophy.

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