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

You too are going to die, and that’s because you too were fortunate
enough to have lived. You may not feel this. But go stand on a cliff sometime,
and maybe you will.
Bukowski once wrote, “We’re all going to die, all of us. What a circus!
That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn’t. We are terrorized
and flattened by life’s trivialities; we are eaten up by nothing.”
Looking back on that night, out by that lake, when I watched my friend
Josh’s body getting fished out of the lake by paramedics. I remember staring
into the black Texas night and watching my ego slowly dissolve into it.
Josh’s death taught me much more than I initially realized. Yes, it helped me
to seize the day, to take responsibility for my choices, and to pursue my
dreams with less shame and inhibition.
But these were side effects of a deeper, more primary lesson. And the
primary lesson was this: there is nothing to be afraid of. Ever. And reminding
myself of my own death repeatedly over the years—whether it be through
meditation, through reading philosophy, or through doing crazy shit like
standing on a cliff in South Africa—is the only thing that has helped me hold
this realization front and center in my mind. This acceptance of my death, this
understanding of my own fragility, has made everything easier—untangling
my addictions, identifying and confronting my own entitlement, accepting
responsibility for my own problems—suffering through my fears and
uncertainties, accepting my failures and embracing rejections—it has all
been made lighter by the thought of my own death. The more I peer into the
darkness, the brighter life gets, the quieter the world becomes, and the less
unconscious resistance I feel to, well, anything.
I sit there on the Cape for a few minutes, taking in everything. When I finally
decide to get up, I put my hands behind me and scoot back. Then, slowly, I
stand. I check the ground around me—making sure there’s no errant rock
ready to sabotage me. Having recognized that I am safe, I begin to walk back
to reality—five feet, ten feet—my body restoring itself with each step. My
feet become lighter. I let life’s magnet draw me in.
As I step back over some rocks, back to the main path, I look up to see a
man staring at me. I stop and make eye contact with him.
“Um. I saw you sitting on the edge over there,” he says. His accent is
Australian. The word “there” rolls out of his mouth awkwardly. He points