The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*CK: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

The chapter’s title, “The Importance of Saying No,” signals where it’s headed, but by its end, it veers into unexpected territory. First, Manson’s continues sharing personal anecdotes. He tells the story of his globetrotting lifestyle, beginning in 2009 and lasting five years. Manson is quick to point out, from his temporarily removed position at the time of writing this book, that while his travels brought him amazing new experiences and friendships, they also brought “superficial highs designed to numb my underlying pain” (165). The act of traveling the world, when considered within this context, seems an act of escape, figuratively and literally. At the root of his pain was a fear of commitment, and the lifestyle he chose for himself, which involved meeting and departing from so many people, was the perfect enabler.

Manson notes that one of the lessons he learned from his exotic lifestyle was that “absolute freedom, by itself, means nothing” (165). In his case, the freedom to move about and operate his life according to his own whims ultimately led him nowhere, despite how exciting it all was. Since nothing really tied him down, one would think that he was living an absolutely free and liberated lifestyle. However, according to Manson, this was the exact reason that he claims freedom means nothing by itself. Without responsibility to something more than himself, his freedom wasn’t satisfying. He eventually had to learn how to tell himself no and to understand that he needed to overcome his fear of commitment, which he eventually did.

He moves next into a discussion on what responsibility means in a relationship. He offers a sarcastic summary of Romeo and Juliet as a means of pointing out the seductive allure of romantic love and that it doesn’t have the substance that people think it should have. Manson likens the euphoria one gets from the romantic attachment to a cocaine high and notes that the feelings can both rob one of the true significance of a loving attachment and cause one to become misguided and think that the euphoria should be what defines the relationship. As anyone in a long-term relationship readily understands, the euphoria doesn’t last, and as Manson points out, the quest to capture that euphoria is akin to craving a drug: “When our highest priority is to always make ourselves feel good, or to always make our partner feel good, then nobody ends up feeling good” (181). Something other than feeling good must be the motivating factor in a relationship for it to be healthy, and to Manson, this begins with trust, responsibility, and being able to speak freely with a partner.