The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck

courtrooms operate. Thousands of therapists were sued and lost their licenses.
Repressed memory therapy fell out of practice and was replaced by more
practical methods. Recent research has only reinforced the painful lesson of
that era: our beliefs are malleable, and our memories are horribly unreliable.
There’s a lot of conventional wisdom out there telling you to “trust
yourself,” to “go with your gut,” and all sorts of other pleasant-sounding
clichés.
But perhaps the answer is to trust yourself less. After all, if our hearts and
minds are so unreliable, maybe we should be questioning our own intentions
and motivations more. If we’re all wrong, all the time, then isn’t selfskepticism
and the rigorous challenging of our own beliefs and assumptions
the only logical route to progress?
This may sound scary and self-destructive. But it’s actually quite the
opposite. It’s not only the safer option, but it’s liberating as well.
The Dangers of Pure Certainty
Erin sits across from me at the sushi restaurant and tries to explain why she
doesn’t believe in death. It’s been almost three hours, and she’s eaten exactly
four cucumber rolls and drunk an entire bottle of sake by herself. (In fact,
she’s about halfway through bottle number two now.) It’s four o’clock on a
Tuesday afternoon.
I didn’t invite her here. She found out where I was via the Internet and
flew out to come find me.
Again.
She’s done this before. You see, Erin is convinced that she can cure
death, but she’s also convinced that she needs my help to do it. But not my
help in like a business sense. If she just needed some PR advice or
something, that would be one thing. No, it’s more than that: she needs me to
be her boyfriend. Why? After three hours of questioning and a bottle and a
half of sake, it still isn’t clear.
My fiancée was with us in the restaurant, by the way. Erin thought it
important that she be included in the discussion; Erin wanted her to know that
she was “willing to share” me and that my girlfriend (now wife) “shouldn’t
feel threatened” by her.
I met Erin at a self-help seminar in 2008. She seemed like a nice enough