Notes on a Nervous Planet

by Matt Haig

The news unconsciously mimics the way fear operates—focusing on the worst things, catastrophizing, listening to an endless, repetitive stream of information on the same worrying topic. So, it can be hard to tell these days where your anxiety disorder ends and where actual news begins.

We are not encouraged to live in the present. We are trained to live somewhere else: the future.

The future isn’t real. The future is abstract. The now is all we know. One now after another now. The now is where we must live. There are billions of different versions of an older you. There is one version of the present you. Focus on that.

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.