The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F_ck

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drown yourself in them to realize that they don’t make youhappy. Such was traveling with me. As I drowned in my fiftythird,fifty-fourth, fifty-fifth country, I began to understandthat while all of my experiences were exciting and great,few of them would have any lasting significance. Whereasmy friends back home were settling down into marriages,buying houses, and giving their time to interestingcompanies or political causes, I was floundering from onehigh to the next.In 2011, I traveled to Saint Petersburg, Russia. The foodsucked. The weather sucked. (Snow in May? Are you fuckingkidding me?) My apartment sucked. Nothing worked.Everything was overpriced. The people were rude andsmelled funny. Nobody smiled and everyone drank toomuch. Yet, I loved it. It was one of my favorite trips.There’s a bluntness to Russian culture that generally rubsWesterners the wrong way. Gone are the fake niceties andverbal webs of politeness. You don’t smile at strangers orpretend to like anything you don’t. In Russia, if something isstupid, you say it’s stupid. If someone is being an asshole,you tell him he’s being an asshole. If you really likesomeone and are having a great time, you tell her that youlike her and are having a great time. It doesn’t matter if thisperson is your friend, a stranger, or someone you met fiveminutes ago on the street.The first week I found all of this really uncomfortable. Iwent on a coffee date with a Russian girl, and within threeminutes of sitting down she looked at me funny and told methat what I’d just said was stupid. I nearly choked on mydrink. There was nothing combative about the way she saidit; it was spoken as if it were some mundane fact—like thequality of the weather that day, or her shoe size—but I wasstill shocked. After all, in the West such outspokenness isseen as highly offensive, especially from someone you justmet. But it went on like this with everyone. Everyone cameacross as rude all the time, and as a result, my Western-
coddled mind felt attacked on all sides. Nagging insecuritiesbegan to surface in situations where they hadn’t existed inyears.But as the weeks wore on, I got used to the Russianfrankness, much as I did the midnight sunsets and thevodka that went down like ice water. And then I startedappreciating it for what it really was: unadulteratedexpression. Honesty in the truest sense of the word.Communication with no conditions, no strings attached, noulterior motive, no sales job, no desperate attempt to beliked.Somehow, after years of travel, it was in perhaps themost un-American of places where I first experienced aparticular flavor of freedom: the ability to say whatever Ithought or felt, without fear of repercussion. It was astrange form of liberation through accepting rejection. Andas someone who had been starved of this kind of bluntexpression most of his life—first by an emotionallyrepressed family life, then later by a meticulouslyconstructed false display of confidence—I got drunk on itlike, well, like it was the finest damn vodka I’d ever had. Themonth I spent in Saint Petersburg went by in a blur, and bythe end I didn’t want to leave.Travel is a fantastic self-development tool, because itextricates you from the values of your culture and showsyou that another society can live with entirely differentvalues and still function and not hate themselves. Thisexposure to different cultural values and metrics then forcesyou to reexamine what seems obvious in your own life andto consider that perhaps it’s not necessarily the best way tolive. In this case, Russia had me reexamining the bullshitty,fake-nice communication that is so common in Angloculture, and asking myself if this wasn’t somehow makingus more insecure around each other and worse at intimacy.I remember discussing this dynamic with my Russianteacher one day, and he had an interesting theory. Having
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CONTENTSCHAPTER 1: Don’t TryThe F
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CHAPTER 1Don’t TryCharles Bukowsk
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success. Even after his fame, he st
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You get anxious about confronting s
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magic fuck-giving fairy dust, you s
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Ever notice that sometimes when you
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Look, this is how it works. You’r
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not give a fuck about what ultimate
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anything more fuck-worthy to dedica
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I believe that today we’re facing
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CHAPTER 2Happiness Is a ProblemAbou
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sit under that tree and not get up
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change. We have evolved to always l
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little pink umbrella. “The soluti
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make them feel better in the short
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really mad; I couldn’t help it.
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managing of our struggles. Whether
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just didn’t “have it,” that I
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happened. None of these “ventures
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themselves. If a person like Jimmy
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then acts to improve upon them. But
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My sweat must be pumping at the spe
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get a haircut and threw out all of
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first time since I could remember,
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freedom we’re given to express ou
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tendency toward entitlement is appa
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All of this “every person can be
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However, thousands of Japanese sold
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In 1972, Suzuki needed another adve
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“How do I stop suffering?” but
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failed to achieve some goal? Why do
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“It bugs me that my brother doesn
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As he sat on the bus back to Los An
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Mustaine is wildly, unimaginably su
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he already had was more important:
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It’s far more helpful to assume t
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Defining Good and Bad ValuesGood va
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man, with an easy life and great fa
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CHAPTER 5You Are Always ChoosingIma
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psychiatric facility one day, James
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it’s still your responsibility to
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to date only women who like me for
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See, I couldn’t control her. No m
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We all love to take responsibility
Page 91 and 92: died. The responsibility for coping
Page 93 and 94: The next step is to encourage the k
Page 95 and 96: financially. They are not to blame
Page 97 and 98: from the inside out. And it’s eve
Page 99 and 100: But as we’ll see, this is a good
Page 101 and 102: When I was with my first girlfriend
Page 103 and 104: than to actually test those beliefs
Page 105 and 106: Generally, within ten to fifteen mi
Page 107 and 108: had sexually abused her as a child.
Page 109 and 110: explain our present-day anger towar
Page 111 and 112: For people who were dissatisfied wi
Page 113 and 114: very spiritual person. She became i
Page 115 and 116: rape and abuse women out of their c
Page 117 and 118: Before we can look at our values an
Page 119 and 120: never changed. For years he went on
Page 121 and 122: victim or dismal failure. Instead,
Page 123 and 124: Many people are able to ask themsel
Page 125 and 126: chosen for ourselves. The truth is,
Page 127 and 128: Failure itself is a relative concep
Page 129 and 130: from overbearing or critical parent
Page 131 and 132: coped with traumatic experiences in
Page 133 and 134: that I could program the VCR withou
Page 135 and 136: Many people, when they feel some fo
Page 137 and 138: perhaps the most important thing I
Page 139 and 140: yourself chasing false dreams, or i
Page 141: anxiety of my teenager years, and a
Page 145 and 146: This is a cornerstone of many of th
Page 147 and 148: dies. The girl is so upset that she
Page 149 and 150: person in the relationship accepts
Page 151 and 152: This is self-defeating, of course.
Page 153 and 154: For savers, the hardest thing to do
Page 155 and 156: gets bruised sometimes, and I bitch
Page 157 and 158: all.” If cheaters can’t express
Page 159 and 160: When you’re pursuing a wide bread
Page 161 and 162: CHAPTER 9. . . And Then You DieSeek
Page 163 and 164: well as to the impact of the jump f
Page 165 and 166: permission to finally live. And per
Page 167 and 168: situations where things might be di
Page 169 and 170: implement, often through lethal for
Page 171 and 172: At three feet, your body goes into
Page 173 and 174: it stifles me, I empty my thoughts,
Page 175 and 176: of false superiority, fall into ina
Page 177 and 178: “Um. I saw you sitting on the edg
Page 179 and 180: go. To Taylor Pearson, Dan Andrews,
Page 182 and 183: CREDITSFront cover design: M-80 Des
Page 184: ABOUT THE PUBLISHERAustraliaHarperC
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The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F_ck

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