The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck Online read [pdf] Chapter 6: You’re Wrong About Everything

CHAPTER 6  You’re Wrong About Everything (But So Am I)  Five hundred years ago cartographers believed that California was an island. Doc- tors believed that slicing a person’s arm open (or causing bleeding anywhere) could cure disease. Scientists believed that fire was made out of something called phlogiston. Women believed that rubbing dog urine on their face had anti-aging benefits. Astronomers believed that the sun revolved around the earth. When I was a little boy, I used to think “mediocre” was a kind of vegetable that I didn’t want to eat. I thought my brother had found a secret passageway in my grandmother’s house because he could get outside without having to leave the bathroom (spoiler alert: there was a window). I also thought that when my friend and his family visited “Washington, B.C.,” they had somehow traveled back in time to when the dinosaurs lived, because after all, “B.C.” was a long time ago. As a teenager, I told everybody that I didn’t care about anything, when the truth was I cared about way too much. Other people ruled my world without my even knowing. I thought happiness was a destiny and not a choice. I thought love was something that just happened, not something that you worked for. I thought being “cool” had to be practiced and learned from others, rather than invented for one- self. When I was with my first girlfriend, I thought we would be together forever. And then, when that relationship ended, I thought I’d never feel the same way about a woman again. And then when I felt the same way about a woman again, I thought 

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck Online read [pdf] Chapter 5: You Are Always Choosing

CHAPTER 5 You Are Always Choosing

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck Online read [pdf] Chapter 4: The Value of Suffering

CHAPTER 4  The Value of Suffering  In the closing months of 1944, after almost a decade of war, the tide was turning against Japan. Their economy was floundering, their military overstretched across half of Asia, and the territories they had won throughout the Pacific were now toppling like dominoes to U.S. forces. Defeat seemed inevitable. On December 26, 1944, Second Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda of the Japanese Imperial Army was de- ployed to the small island of Lubang in the Philippines. His orders were to slow the United States’ progress as much as possible, to stand and fight at all costs, and to never surrender. Both he and his commander knew it was essentially a suicide mission. In February 1945, the Americans arrived on Lubang and took the island with overwhelming force. Within days, most of the Japanese soldiers had either surrendered or been killed, but Onoda and three of his men managed to hide in the jungle. From there, they began a guerrilla warfare campaign against the U.S. forces and the local population, attacking supply lines, shooting at stray soldiers, and interfering with the American forces in any way that they could. That August, half a year later, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hi- roshima and Nagasaki. Japan surrendered, and the deadliest war in human history came to its dra- matic conclusion. However, thousands of Japanese soldiers were still scattered among the Pacific isles, and most, like Onoda, were hiding in the jungle, unaware that the war was over. These holdouts continued to fight and pillage as they had before. This was a real problem for rebuilding eastern Asia after the war, and the governments agreed something must be done. The U.S. military, in conjunction with the Japanese government, dropped thousands of leaflets throughout the Pacific region, announcing that the war was over and it was time for everyone to go home. Onoda and his men, like many others, found and read these leaflets, but unlike most of the others, Onoda decided that they were fake, a trap set by the American forces to get the guerrilla fighters to show themselves. Onoda burned the leaflets, and he and his men stayed hidden and continued to fight. Five years went by. The leaflets had stopped, and most of the American forces had long since gone home. The local population on Lubang attempted to return to their normal lives of farming and fishing. Yet there were Hiroo Onoda and his merry men, still shooting at the farmers, burning their crops, stealing their livestock, and murdering locals who wandered too far into the jungle. The Philippine government then took to drawing up new flyers and spreading them out across the jun- gle. Come out, they said. The war is over. You lost. But these, too, were ignored. In 1952, the Japanese government made one final effort to draw the last remaining soldiers out of hiding throughout the Pacific. This time, letters and pictures from the missing soldiers’ families were air-dropped, along with a personal note from the emperor himself. Once again, Onoda refused to believe that the information was real. Once again, he believed the airdrop to be a trick by the Americans. Once again, he and his men stood and continued to fight. 

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck Online read [pdf] Chapter 3: You Are Not Special 

CHAPTER 3  You Are Not Special  I once knew a guy; we’ll call him Jimmy. Jimmy always had various business ventures going. On any given day, if you asked him what he was doing, he’d rattle off the name of some firm he was consulting with, or he’d describe a promising medical app he was looking for angel investors to fund, or he’d talk about some charity event he was supposed to be the keynote speaker for, or how he had an idea for a more effi- cient type of gas pump that was going to make him billions. The guy was always rolling, always on, and if you gave him an inch of conversational daylight, he’d pulverize you about how world- spinning his work was, how brilliant his latest ideas were, and he’d name-drop so much it felt like you were talking to a tabloid reporter. Jimmy was all positivity all the time. Always pushing himself, 

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck Online read [pdf] Chapter 2: Happiness Is a Problem 

CHAPTER 2  Happiness Is a Problem  About twenty-five hundred years ago, in the Himalayan foothills of present-day Nepal, there lived in a great palace a king who was going to have a son. For this son the king had a particularly grand idea: he would make the child’s life perfect. The child would never know a moment of suffering—every need, every de- sire, would be accounted for at all times. The king built high walls around the palace that prevented the prince from knowing the outside world. He spoiled the child, lav- ishing him with food and gifts, surrounding him with servants who catered to his every whim. And just as planned, the child grew up ignorant of the routine cruelties of human existence. All of the prince’s childhood went on like this. But despite the endless luxury and opulence, the prince became kind of a pissed- off young man. Soon, every experience felt empty and valueless. 

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck Online read [pdf] Chapter 1: Don’t Try 

CHAPTER 1  Don’t Try  Charles Bukowski was an alcoholic, a womanizer, a chronic gam- bler, a lout, a cheapskate, a deadbeat, and on his worst days, a poet. He’s probably the last person on earth you would ever look to for life advice or expect to see in any sort of self-help book. Which is why he’s the perfect place to start. Bukowski wanted to be a writer. But for decades his work was rejected by almost every magazine, newspaper, journal, agent, and publisher he submitted to. His work was horrible, they said. Crude. Disgusting. Depraved. And as the stacks of rejection slips piled up, the weight of his failures pushed him deep into an alco- hol-fu-eled depression that would follow him for most of his life. Bukowski had a day job as a letter-filer at a post office. He got paid shit money and spent most of it on booze. He gambled away the rest at the racetrack. At night, he would drink alone and sometimes hammer out poetry on his beat-up old typewriter. 

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