Notes on a Nervous Planet

by Matt Haig

We need to find out what is good for us, and leave the rest. We don’t need another world. Everything we need is here, if we give up thinking we need everything.

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.

I am coming to realize how wrong many of my aspirations have been. How locked out of the present I have found myself. How I have always wanted more of whatever was in front of me. I need to find a way to stay still, in the present, and, as my nan used to say, be happy with what you have.

Increasingly, we serve time rather than time serving us. We fret about time. We wonder where time has gone. We are obsessed with time.

The internet has enabled us to join together and make change happen. For better and for worse. The trouble is that if we are plugged in to a vast nervous system, our happiness—and misery—is more collective than ever. The group’s emotions become our own.

Note to self Keep calm. Keep going. Keep human. Keep pushing. Keep yearning. Keep perfecting. Keep looking out the window. Keep focus. Keep free. Keep ignoring the trolls. Keep ignoring pop-up ads and pop-up thoughts. Keep risking ridicule. Keep curious. Keep hold of the truth. Keep loving. Keep allowing yourself the human privilege of mistakes. Keep a space that is you and put a fence around it. Keep reading. Keep writing. Keep your phone at arm’s length. Keep your head when all about you are losing theirs. Keep breathing. Keep inhaling life itself. Keep remembering where stress can lead.