05/20/2019
Just finished this book and wanted to give you a couple key points that I picked up from it-
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The first thing that struck me about the book was the author's explanation of “embracing the suck”- He talks about how we are constantly chasing the “how to be happy” recipe and forgetting that:
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“The desire for more positive experience is ITSELF a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.”
Therefor, pursuing “feeling better” all the time in turn makes you feel less satisfied. -
The book doesn’t lack in obscenities, hence the title-so I’ll censor those- when I paraphrase, but he also goes into life always having “problems” and that your goal, should be making your problems “better” -
He uses the example of ‘when you solve your problem of not spending enough time with your spouse by a monthly date night- THERE will be more problems like “where do we eat, how do we get the money and trying to rediscover the spark” so problems STILL exist, but they are “better” problems to have. -
He also talk about defining your values and what values tend to be “crappy” ones: •Pleasure: b/c it’s the FAST, QUICK and EASY
•Material success: esp. When it replaces honesty, non violence and compassion
•Always being right: b/c this prevents us from LEARNING from our past mistakes
•And (awkwardly) staying positive: (in the sense of) not acknowledging that sometimes, LIFE SUCKS. -
Just finished the last chapter of this book during meatballs’ nap and it is titled: “...and then you die” so that was uplifting.
But I like the quote that says, “death scares us...but in a bizarre backwards way, death is the light by which the shadow of all of life’s meaning is measured. Without death, everything would feel inconsequential, all experience arbitrary, all metrics and values suddenly zero-”
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And...on that note- has anyone read this? Thoughts? Anyone want me to send it to them as a random mail gift?
