An insightful and interesting self-help book written by a potty-mouth author- I should've been warned about how much cussing I was to anticipate just reading the title. I listened to the audiobook version so there was no skimming of swear words for me. This may seem an overreaction considering how common it is now to throw in a few F words here and there in content, but I'm a bit old fashioned and enjoy a decent read which won't make me scrunch up my nose ever so often.
The book talks about various aspects of our personalities, how we base our choices, how we arrive at how we feel, and it allows you to sort of run little reality checks on yourself. I appreciate how honest the author is about his revelations, successes, failures and problem areas, good and bad alike. It talks about entitlement, loneliness and I like that the book explores the influence of a smartphone-and-internet-dependent lifestyle on a generation that is materially rich and emotionally drained out, making the book that much relatable. I felt enriched and enjoyed his inferences, stories and analogies; he effortlessly breaks things down to the easiest level possible. Although I do wonder if it is accurate to assume all of us are basically similar people with similar abilities who can follow similar tactics to address similar/all sorts of problems. Does one size really fit all?
My favorite quote from the book: "Whether you're listening to Aristotle or the psychologist at Harvard or Jesus Christ or the goddamn Beatles, they all say that happiness comes from the same thing- caring about something greater than yourself. Believing that you are a contributing component in some much larger entity, that your life is but a mere side process in some great unintelligible production. This feeling is what people go to church for, it's what they fight in wars for, it's what they raise families and save pensions and build bridges and invent cellphones for. This fleeting sense of being part of something greater and more unknowable than themselves. And entitlement strips this away from us. The gravity of entitlement sucks all attention inward toward ourselves causing us to feel as though we are the centre of all the problems in the universe, that we are the one suffering all of the injustices, that we are the one who deserves greatness over all others. As alluring as it is, entitlement isolates us. Our curiosity and excitement for the world turns in upon itself and reflects our own biases and projections onto every person we meet and every event we experience...it is spiritual poison."
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