Mark Manson - The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F__k (2016, HarperOne) - libgen.li

At three feet, your body goes into full-scale red alert. You are now within
an errant shoelace-trip of your life ending. It feels as though a hefty gust of
wind could send you sailing off into that blue-bisected eternity. Your legs
shake. As do your hands. As does your voice, in case you need to remind
yourself you’re not about to plummet to your death.
The three-foot distance is most people’s absolute limit. It’s just close
enough to lean forward and catch a glimpse of the bottom, but still far enough
to feel as though you’re not at any real risk of killing yourself. Standing that
close to the edge of a cliff, even one as beautiful and mesmerizing as the
Cape of Good Hope, induces a heady sense of vertigo, and threatens to
regurgitate any recent meal.
Is this it? Is this all there is? Do I already know everything I will ever
know?
I take another microstep, then another. Two feet now. My forward leg
vibrates as I put the weight of my body on it. I shuffle on. Against the magnet.
Against my mind. Against all my better instincts for survival.
One foot now. I’m now looking straight down the cliff face. I feel a
sudden urge to cry. My body instinctively crouches, protecting itself against
something imagined and inexplicable. The wind comes in hailstorms. The
thoughts come in right hooks.
At one foot you feel like you’re floating. Anything but looking straight
down feels as though you’re part of the sky itself. You actually kind of expect
to fall at this point.
I crouch there for a moment, catching my breath, collecting my thoughts. I
force myself to stare down at the water hitting the rocks below me. Then I
look again to my right, at the little ants milling about the signage below me,
snapping photos, chasing tour buses, on the off chance that somebody
somehow sees me. This desire for attention is wholly irrational. But so is all
of this. It’s impossible to make me out up here, of course. And even if it
weren’t, there’s nothing that those distant people could say or do.
All I hear is the wind.
Is this it?
My body shudders, the fear becoming euphoric and blinding. I focus my
mind and clear my thoughts in a kind of meditation. Nothing makes you
present and mindful like being mere inches away from your own death. I