Part memoir, part self-help book, Matt Haig's unassuming but wise Notes on a Nervous Planet is the perfect antidote for that stab of anxiety felt when the words "Breaking News" flash across the television screen. It's what you need when you can't kick the Pavlovian impulse to check compulsively the likes for your most recent Facebook post.
His memoir Reasons to Stay Alive described a struggle with depression in his 20s that pushed him to the brink of suicide. Now Haig offers a collection of mostly micro-essays, a buffet of ingenious responses to what he suggests is the overriding question of our time: "How can we live in a mad world without ourselves going mad?"
Haig singles out most of the usual culprits for collective angst, including the 24-hour news cycle, where "events are continuously breaking but rarely absorbed," and which feels like "watching a continuous metaphor for generalised anxiety disorder." Meanwhile, social media can "make you feel like you are inside a stock exchange where you--or your online personality--is the stock." But at the heart of his diagnosis is that, alongside this atmosphere of constant connection and distraction, the culture is designed to instill in its participants a feeling of perpetual dissatisfaction, of never having or being enough. "We are being sold unhappiness," he writes, "because unhappiness is where the money is."
There's no shortage of practical wisdom in this book. It features checklists entitled "How to own a smartphone and still be a functioning human being" and "Ten ways to work without breaking down." It also suggests adopting healthy practices like yoga (one of Haig's principal lifelines), spending time in nature and dealing with sleep deprivation. Of equal value, however, is Haig's candor in exposing his own struggles. These include his tendency to engage in online arguments ("not the most fulfilling way to spend our limited days on this earth") or to "answer emails while I should be listening to my mum talk about her trip to see a doctor." If you've ever spent a post-midnight hour wandering bleary-eyed from one website to another, you'll appreciate his essay "How to stay sane on the internet: a list of utopian commandments I rarely follow, because they are so damn difficult."
With generosity and wit, Haig gently reminds readers that life is hard enough without the damage people inflict on themselves every day, and that a bit of self-acceptance will serve to heal many modern maladies. When you've finished this warmhearted, life-affirming book, chances are you'll find that an appealing prescription for starting to meet the challenges of our hyperconnected world. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer
Shelf Talker: Matt Haig offers a wide-ranging survey of the steps we can take to live a saner life in a world that seems, at times, insane.