The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F_ck

anxiety of my teenager years, and as a result I felt like I
could meet anybody I wanted, be friends with anybody I
wanted, love anybody I wanted, have sex with anybody I
wanted—so why would I ever commit to a single person, or
even a single social group, a single city or country or
culture? If I could experience everything equally, then I
should experience them all equally, right?
Armed with this grandiose sense of connectivity to the
world, I bounced back and forth across countries and oceans
in a game of global hopscotch that lasted over five years. I
visited fifty-five countries, made dozens of friends, and
found myself in the arms of a number of lovers—all of whom
were quickly replaced and some of whom were already
forgotten by the next flight to the next country.
It was a strange life, replete with fantastic, horizonbreaching
experiences as well as superficial highs designed
to numb my underlying pain. It seemed both so profound
yet so meaningless at the same time, and still does. Some
of my greatest life lessons and character-defining moments
came on the road during this period. But some of the
biggest wastes of my time and energy came during this
period as well.
Now I live in New York. I have a house and furniture and
an electric bill and a wife. None of it is particularly
glamorous or exciting. And I like it that way. Because after
all the years of excitement, the biggest lesson I took from
my adventuring was this: absolute freedom, by itself, means
nothing.
Freedom grants the opportunity for greater meaning, but
by itself there is nothing necessarily meaningful about it.
Ultimately, the only way to achieve meaning and a sense of
importance in one’s life is through a rejection of
alternatives, a narrowing of freedom, a choice of
commitment to one place, one belief, or (gulp) one person.
This realization came to me slowly over the course of my
years traveling. As with most excesses in life, you have to