Unexpected surprises

Thanks to my friend for the gift. If had to buy it by myself, I would not have done it, certainly by prejudice, but also for an editorial choice that in my personal opinion does not reward. I’m referring to the title: “The subtle art of not giving a f*ck” author Mark Manson, Newton Compton. Whether it’s my own prejudice or not, the arts of doing so many things have tired me out, illustrated by professors (Schopenhauer), or by mystifying “nobody” gentlemen, improvised masters of something. Time passes and, in my case, relativism sets the absolutes more and more aside.

With laziness, I put the book there first, in the place of the important books. Immediately not to touch him: I looked at him and wondered when and if I would ever start to read it. From a distance. Then I approached the author trying to familiarize. A man with many experiences, many, of real life, a redeemed Bukowski, who in the end perhaps with the necessary grace, mixes sociology, psychology, anthropology lived … the street.

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The first programmatic pages, nothing blinding. We make him doing a little more purgatory. Then the unveiling, sudden and immediate, and the reading in a few days. The subtitle on the cover says: “The incorrect (but effective) method to break free from annoying people, false problems, and everyday breakdowns and live happily.” A positive and decisive thought-style message.

Nothing to do with the book, which turns out to be a useful support by moving within concepts such as relativity, recognition of difficulties, fears, uncertainties, responsible choice of courage, responsibility for everything that concerns us. Ultimately a strong principle: simplicity and normality. The book is a serious aid to self-improvement. Many examples to convince the most exalted and obsessed reader in avoiding problems that the essence of the best life lies differently in dealing with problems, whether superficial or profound. Catalog and process them. The toolbox: five values, which the author defines as counterintuitive.

In the order:

1) responsibility, to assume them in relation to everything that happens in our life

2) uncertainty: admitting ignorance and cultivating doubt, especially towards our deepest beliefs

3) failure: discover flaws and errors and act accordingly

4) refusal: the ability to say and be told “no”, a strong help to understand what to accept and what not to accept in our existence

5) contemplation of our mortality: I prefer to define existential precariousness, the true value that launches us into our life perspective, in the sense that there is nothing to fear, ever

The book is ending with a very powerful scene. The author tells about his trip to South Africa, in particular to the Cape of Good Hope, considered the southernmost tip of Africa. The author is right on the rock of the Cape, without barriers, in front of only the overhang of the oceans on the border. He describes his slow approach to sit on the edge of the cliff, legs dangling. He gets up, takes to return and meets a subject who has seen the scene, ashen in the face and worried about it. He hesitantly asks: “Is everything okay? How do you feel?”. Our author (understanding in the subject and in his eyes the fear of death and the feeling of having witnessed at least a failed suicide) replies: “Alive, very alive”. In two lines two different points of view: fear and contemplation of death.

My comment? The book is worth reading, it enriches our wealth of knowledge, certainties in doubt.

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