Notes on a Nervous Planet

by Matt Haig

As Montaigne put it, ‘He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.’

‘Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about killing than we know about living.’

MAYBE HAPPINESS IS not about us, as individuals. Maybe it is not something that arrives into us. Maybe happiness is felt heading out, not in. Maybe happiness is not about what we deserve because we’re worth it. Maybe happiness is not about what we can get. Maybe happiness is about what we already have. Maybe happiness is about what we can give. Maybe happiness is not a butterfly we can catch with a net. Maybe there is no certain way to be happy. Maybe there are only maybes. If (as Emily Dickinson said) ‘Forever – is composed of Nows –’, maybe the nows are made of maybes. Maybe the point of life is to give up certainty and to embrace life’s beautiful uncertainty.

To enjoy life, we might have to stop thinking about what we will never be able to read and watch and say and do, and start to think of how to enjoy the world within our boundaries. To live on a human scale. To focus on the few things we can do, rather than the millions of things we can’t. To not crave parallel lives. To find a smaller mathematics. To be a proud and singular one. An indivisible prime.

‘Every one of us,’ said the physicist Carl Sagan, ‘is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.’

‘In all chaos there is a cosmos,’ said Carl Jung, ‘in all disorder a secret order.’

IT IS ALL right to want something – fame, the semblance of youth, 10,000 likes, hard abs, doughnuts – but wanting is also lacking. That is what ‘want’ means. So we have to be careful of our wants and watch that they don’t cause too many holes inside us, otherwise happiness will drip through us like water through a leaky bucket. The moment we want is the moment we are dissatisfied. The more we want, the more we will drip ourselves away.

craving for the thing is rarely met by the satisfaction of getting it. And so we crave more. And the cycle repeats. We are encouraged to want what will only make us want more. We are, in short, encouraged to be addicts.

Find a good book. And sit down and read it. There will be times in your life when you’ll feel lost and confused. The way back to yourself is through reading. I want you to remember that. The more you read, the more you will know how to find your way through those difficult times.

Try to want less. A want is a hole. A want is a lack. That is part of the definition. When the poet Byron wrote ‘I want a hero’ he meant that he didn’t have one. The act of wanting things we don’t need makes us feel a lack we didn’t have. Everything you need is here. A human being is complete just being human. We are our own destination.

We come complete. Give us some food and drink and shelter, sing us a song, tell us a story, give us people to talk to and care for and fall in love with and there you go. A life.

We are encouraged to buy stuff to make ourselves happy because companies are encouraged to make more money to make themselves more successful. It is also addictive. It isn’t addictive because it makes us happy. It is addictive because it doesn’t make us happy. We buy something and we enjoy it – we enjoy the newness of it – for a little while but then we get used to having it, we acclimatise, and so we need something else. We need to feel that sense of change, of variety. Something newer, something better, something upgraded. And the same thing happens again. And over time we get used to more and more stuff. And this applies to everything. The Instagrammer who enjoys getting

No matter what we buy or achieve, the feelings don’t last. A sports champion always wants another win. The millionaire always wants another million. The spotlighthungry star wants more fame. Just as the alcoholic wants another drink and the gambler wants another bet. But there are always going to be diminishing returns. The child with a hundred toys is going to play with each new one less and less.

And think about it. If you could afford a holiday ten times more expensive than your last holiday, would you feel ten times more relaxed? I doubt it. If you could spend ten times longer looking at your Twitter feed, would you

be ten times more informed? Of course not. If you spent twice as long at work would you get twice as much done? Research suggests you wouldn’t. If you could buy a car ten times more expensive than your current one would it get you from A to B ten times quicker? Nope. If you bought mor...

You are conditioned to want more. Often this conditioning comes from companies who themselves are conditioned, collectively, to want more. Wanting more is the default setting. But just as there is only one planet – a planet with finite resources – there is also only one you. And you also have a finite resource – time. And, let’s face it, you can’t multiply yourself. An overloaded planet cajoles us into overloaded lives but, ultimately, you can’t play with all the toys. You can’t use all the apps. You can’t be at all the parties. You can’t do the work of 20 people. You can’t be up to speed on all the news. You can’t wear all eleven of your coats at once. You can’t watch every must-see show. You ...

want more, but as each new buzz diminishes there comes a point where you have to ask yourself: what is all this for? How much extra happiness am I acquiring? Why am I wanting so much more than I need? Wouldn’t...

– Awareness. Be aware of how much time you are spending on your phone, of how much the news is messing with your mind, of how your attitudes to work are changing, of how many pressures you feel, and how many of them stem from problems of modern life, of being connected into the world’s nervous system. Awareness becomes a solution. Just as being aware of your hand on a hot stove means you can take your hand off the stove, being aware of the invisible sharks of modern life helps you to avoid them.