Notes on a Nervous Planet

by Matt Haig

To be liked by everyone you would have to be the blandest person ever.

The problem is not that the world is a mess, but that we expect it to be otherwise. We are given the idea that we have control.

It’s just a shame, I suppose, that it takes such major events in our lives, or in the lives of the people we love, for perspective to arrive. Imagine if we could keep hold of that perspective. If we could always have our priorities right, even during the good and healthy times. Imagine if we could always think of our loved ones the way we think of them when they are in a critical condition. If we could always keep that love – love that is always there – so close to the surface. Imagine if we could keep the kindness and soft gratitude towards life itself. I am trying now, when my life gets too packed with unnecessary stressful junk, to remember that room in the hospital. Where patients were thankful just to look at the view out of a window. Some sunshine and sycamore trees. And where life, on its own, was everything.

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.

There is no future. Planning for the future is just planning for another present in which you will be planning for the future.