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

Confronting the reality of our own mortality is important because it
obliterates all the crappy, fragile, superficial values in life. While most
people whittle their days chasing another buck, or a little bit more fame and
attention, or a little bit more assurance that they’re right or loved, death
confronts all of us with a far more painful and important question: What is
your legacy?
How will the world be different and better when you’re gone? What
mark will you have made? What influence will you have caused? They say
that a butterfly flapping its wings in Africa can cause a hurricane in Florida;
well, what hurricanes will you leave in your wake?
As Becker pointed out, this is arguably the only truly important question
in our life. Yet we avoid thinking about it. One, because it’s hard. Two,
because it’s scary. Three, because we have no fucking clue what we’re
doing.
And when we avoid this question, we let trivial and hateful values hijack
our brains and take control of our desires and ambitions. Without
acknowledging the ever-present gaze of death, the superficial will appear
important, and the important will appear superficial. Death is the only thing
we can know with any certainty. And as such, it must be the compass by
which we orient all of our other values and decisions. It is the correct
answer to all of the questions we should ask but never do. The only way to
be comfortable with death is to understand and see yourself as something
bigger than yourself; to choose values that stretch beyond serving yourself,
that are simple and immediate and controllable and tolerant of the chaotic
world around you. This is the basic root of all happiness. Whether you’re
listening to Aristotle or the psychologists at Harvard or Jesus Christ or the
goddamn Beatles, they all say that happiness comes from the same thing:
caring about something greater than yourself, believing that you are a
contributing component in some much larger entity, that your life is but a
mere side process of some great unintelligible production. This feeling is
what people go to church for; it’s what they fight in wars for; it’s what they
raise families and save pensions and build bridges and invent cell phones
for: this fleeting sense of being part of something greater and more
unknowable than themselves.
And entitlement strips this away from us. The gravity of entitlement sucks
all attention inward, toward ourselves, causing us to feel as though we are at