The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F_ck

you only begin to question more and more what you’re
doing wrong.
And it’s in these moments of insecurity, of deep despair,
that we become susceptible to an insidious entitlement:
believing that we deserve to cheat a little to get our way,
that other people deserve to be punished, that we deserve
to take what we want, and sometimes violently.
It’s the backwards law again: the more you try to be
certain about something, the more uncertain and insecure
you will feel.
But the converse is true as well: the more you embrace
being uncertain and not knowing, the more comfortable you
will feel in knowing what you don’t know.
Uncertainty removes our judgments of others; it
preempts the unnecessary stereotyping and biases that we
otherwise feel when we see somebody on TV, in the office,
or on the street. Uncertainty also relieves us of our
judgment of ourselves. We don’t know if we’re lovable or
not; we don’t know how attractive we are; we don’t know
how successful we could potentially become. The only way
to achieve these things is to remain uncertain of them and
be open to finding them out through experience.
Uncertainty is the root of all progress and all growth. As
the old adage goes, the man who believes he knows
everything learns nothing. We cannot learn anything without
first not knowing something. The more we admit we do not
know, the more opportunities we gain to learn.
Our values are imperfect and incomplete, and to assume
that they are perfect and complete is to put us in a
dangerously dogmatic mindset that breeds entitlement and
avoids responsibility. The only way to solve our problems is
to first admit that our actions and beliefs up to this point
have been wrong and are not working.
This openness to being wrong must exist for any real
change or growth to take place.