I am 23 years old, an age where you basically discover all the obvious truths that you should’ve learned from your parents but somehow slipped through.
One of these truth is important enough that it warrants a blog post on it’s own; this is my small contribution to the world, and I hope that someone sees it and recognizes themselves perhaps and that it shifts the balance a little bit for them !
Here in this blog post I want to take you by the shoulder and shake you and tell « see???? It’s all PEACE OF MIND all the way down » then shake you some more.
WHY peace of mind is so important?
Peace of mind is literally the #1 thing that matters; all the good stuff comes from peace of mind! I’m sure that it’s obvious to 80% of the people, but then there’s the 20% that’s endlessly suffering because they think peace of mind is lame.
Some concrete examples:
Good programming = when you have space to think
Good cooking = when you’re not rushed, when you have choice in your ingredients
Good relationships = when you’re calm, when you can really be in the present moment
Gen Z people seem to grasp this concept somehow at a superficial level i.e. « doing boring things is good for you » tiktoks or « choose peace » Pinterest posts. Or I think on HN I even saw people who were like « staring at the wall for 10 minutes is a cheat code like it makes me sooo much smarter ». LOL. Guys. Sure you’re onto something, but there are better ways of achieving the same thing and some more.
However, what we misunderstand as a generation is that « doing boring things » is supposed to feel good. It’s about the whole thing.
- Cooking is supposed to feel good
- Programming is supposed to feel good
- Listening to your grandpa who’s on repeat about car motors internals is supposed to feel good
- Doing your dishes, doing your laundry is supposed to feel good.
- Cleaning your home is doing to feel good
Why don’t we have peace of mind?
The thing is that we don’t have peace of mind; we were born with it I guess, but we didn’t value it enough and instead we spend it on a bunch of useless things:
- Netflix
- YouTube
- Endless texting
Why do we do that? At first, it’s a social thing. You need to do it to have something to talk about at lunch. Then, in my opinion, it’s just addiction entering the pictures. You need to have something going on at all times or you don’t feel good.
Once you have the habit of scrolling TikTok for 10 hours a day, it’s really hard to recover. When you stop watching it, there are only bad thoughts in your head. You’re feeling guilty about not working/studying enough; you feel crowded with the ton of information that you saw; you compared yourself to someone else and feel bad about yourself. So now, you don’t have peace of mind, and to quiet the pain, you go from one addiction to the other. So many times, I stopped using Instagram to get addicted to YouTube right after. Or if I stop YouTube, just get stuck scrolling and refreshing Hacker News many times a day.
Your stupid materialistic goal REQUIRES piece of mind anyway
- You want MONEY? Peace of mind. To solve problems.
- You want GIRLS? Peace of mind. They can feel it.
- You want FAME? Peace of mind! Have you seen goddamn Mac DeMarco on YouTube? This guy should be the next Dalai Lama. You don’t have to like his music, I personally don’t. Just look at his body. Don’t you feel the peace? That peace is the whole thing, it’s why he can make music that people love.
Even for materialistic goals, having piece of mind makes everything so dramatically easier. Don’t try to pursue any of those to get peace of mind. Pursue peace of mind first for its own thing. Of course that’s easier when you’ve got a supportive family; but if you have one you have literally zero excuse.
How do we get that peace of mind?
So. How do we cultivate peace of mind?
The issue is that it’s a self-bootstrapping problem. Solving any issue requires peace of mind. If you have 0 peace of mind, you can’t find the solution to « how do I get peace of mind ».
I think that for me, what solved it somehow is that the thoughts started getting so intense that I started reading books. Just to quiet the noise. Social media? I removed it already. YouTube? Nothing interesting anymore. Hacker News? Read all the posts already + they felt boring.
I’ve had the luck of been gifted an e-reader and I thought it would be a good moment to use it. There was a hacker news post that made me want to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; which I read skeptically at first. So, there I was, reading ZAMM at 4am everyday. Then I read Lila. Then I read « The Razor’s Edge ». It’s important that this was on an e-reader because it removed distractions. It made reading less miserable. (It’s incredibly hard to read a book if you’re used to watching videos all the time)
… anyway, little by little, everything started to fall into place, and the bootstrapping problem solved itself.
Maybe it was just the act of reading honestly, but ZAMM and Lila are explicitly about peace of mind, and « The Razor’s Edge » shows you that some paths lead to different outcomes and that it all stems from what you value. So maybe it was just ZAMM that changed my life; I don’t think I am the first one to write about that.
I don’t want to speak about what I did next since it’s a little personal :). But it’s all about « peace of mind = number 1 priority », if that helps.
ZAMM is GREAT and I don’t care what you think
Some people will say that ZAMM is a snobbish book. I have been thinking about this ever since I finished this book: « Should I hide that I am a ZAMM fan to the rest of the world? »
Well my answer today is: no I am not going to hide it. This is my ZAMM coming out. You guys can’t stop me. I’ll say it plainly: ZAMM is a GREAT book. If you think otherwise then we can’t be friends. It’s my religion now so I’ll go on a crusade if you disagree.
Yes it’s a little bit snobbish, I will concede it but please just don’t tell me? It’s like if someone told you that Taylor Swift saved their life because of her songs. Yes it doesn’t make sense to you, but it does and the same way that person holds Taylor Swift as a sacred person, I will hold ZAMM as my personal bible. Don’t get surprised if I’m unhappy if you criticize it. It’s literally my entire personality now.
Peace of Mind and religion
The concept of Karmic Cycle. It’s fuzzy in my head. But basically: you keep doing the same thing, you suffer, you don’t get why you suffer or at least don’t act on it; you repeat the cycle. You have to BREAK from the damn karmic cycle.
It’s all STRAIGHT from ZAMM and India and we’ve been thinking India’s lame cuz it’s not hygienic. WAKE UP! India has produced the most useful thing ever: Buddhism.
Peace of Mind is the whole point of Buddhism. Us Europeans have our stupid Christianism that wants us to feel FEAR of GOD every day of our fucking waking life. To repent. Everyday, you’re saying sorry for existing. What about heaven? Well it looks a little bit boring and then the solution will be watch Netflix, but if heaven is Netflix then it’s a bit underwhelming? What’s the point. Buddhism contains an equal amount of hallucinated nonsense on the metaphysics of the universe but at least it gives a real path towards happiness. I’d rather believe that god is the Dharma and that we’re the dharma and that somehow we’re going to become one with a big ball of white stuff if I keep improving myself than Christianism where there’s a 50% chance I’ll get tortured for the rest of eternity if I don’t act nice enough to pay for my existence within the next 60 years.
I want to also stress that the Asian philosophers are STRONG. They smack their balls with pieces of wood and sleep on nails to prove how strong they are. What about our French philosophers? LMAO ! They drink coffee, eat croissant, stress, smoke opium, complain all day long in letters, books and newspapers. Okay that’s a bit of a stretch but you get the point I hope.
So what to do?
Stop hanging out with bad people. Stop trying to numb your thoughts. It’s REAL LIFE ! You’ve got one. Your brain is here for a REASON. These thoughts are here for you to ACT on them!
Post something on the internet, talk about it with a friend. If you don’t have friends, it’s because you suck in some way? Perhaps because you don’t answer people’s text? And you don’t answer people’s texts because …? Your mind has been trying to tell you since the beginning man.
You just’ve not been listening. Because you didn’t have peace of mind. You don’t have peace of mind because you weren’t listening. You can’t listen now because it’s too painful. It’s too painful because you haven’t been listening for a long time.
The thing is; you don’t have to start listening to everything. Just listen to one thing? ACT ON IT.
Better late than never…