Notes on a Nervous Planet

by Matt Haig

The way we see all turtles as turtles. Human, human, human. Make ourselves see what we pretend to know. Remind ourselves that we are an animal united as a species existing on this tender blue speck in space, the only planet that we know of containing life.

Cynicism was a luxury for the non-suicidal. I had to find hope. The thing with feathers. My life depended on it.

So this is the attitude to sleep: something to be suspicious of because it is a time when we are not plugged in, consuming, paying. And this is also our attitude to time: something that mustn’t be wasted simply by resting, being, sleeping. We are ruled by the clock. By the light bulb. By the glowing smartphone.

Multitasking creates a dopamine-addiction cycle, rewarding the brain for losing focus.

Yes, people might end up buying a diet book to get the body of a model who endorses it, or a perfume to be more like the image of a celebrity whose name is on the bottle, but that all comes at a cost that is more than financial. People might feel better in the instant hit of the purchase, but in the long term it just feeds a craving to be someone else: someone more glamorous, more attractive, more famous. We are encouraged out of ourselves, to want to have other lives. Lives that are no more real than pots of gold at the end of rainbows.

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.

the pattern of addiction – dissatisfaction to temporary solution to increased dissatisfaction – is the model for most of consumer culture.

If the madness is collective and the illness is cultural it can be hard to diagnose, let alone treat.

We are often made to feel guilty when we aren’t working. We say to ourselves, like Benjamin Franklin did, that ‘time is money’, forgetting that money is also luck. A lot of people who work very long hours have far less money than people who have never worked in their life.

Never be cool. Never try to be cool. Never worry what the cool people think. Head for the warm people. Life is warmth. You’ll be cool when you’re dead.