The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck

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, horizon-breaching 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 drown yourself in them to realize
that they don’t make you happy. Such was traveling with me. As I drowned
in my fifty-third, fifty-fourth, fifty-fifth country, I began to understand that
while all of my experiences were exciting and great, few of them would have
any lasting significance. Whereas my friends back home were settling down
into marriages, buying houses, and giving their time to interesting companies
or political causes, I was floundering from one high to the next.
In 2011, I traveled to Saint Petersburg, Russia. The food sucked. The
weather sucked. (Snow in May? Are you fucking kidding me?) My apartment
sucked. Nothing worked. Everything was overpriced. The people were rude
and smelled funny. Nobody smiled and everyone drank too much. Yet, I
loved it. It was one of my favorite trips.
There’s a bluntness to Russian culture that generally rubs Westerners the
wrong way. Gone are the fake niceties and verbal webs of politeness. You