it's well understood by good parents that life should only ever get so exciting for a baby after friends have come round and brought presents and made animated faces after there's been some cake and some cuddles after they've been a lot of bright lights and perhaps some songs - enough is enough the baby will start to look Stern and then burst into tears and the wise parent knows that nothing is particularly wrong though the baby may by now be wailing it's just time for a nap the brain needs to process digest and divide up the welter
of experiences that have been ingested and so the curtains are drawn baby is laid down next to the soft toys and soon it's asleep and calm descends everyone knows that life is going to be a lot more manageable again in an hour sadly we exercise no such caution with ourselves we shed you'll a week in which we're going to see friends every night in which we're going to do 12 meetings three of them requiring a lot of preparation where we'll make a quick overnight - to another country on the Wednesday where we'll watch three films
read 14 newspapers change six pairs of sheets have 5 heavy meals after 8 p.m. and drink 30 cups of coffee and then we lament that our lives are not as calm as they might be and that we're close to mental collapse we refuse to take seriously how much of our baby hood is left inside our adult selves and therefore how much care we have to take to keep things simple and very very calm what registers as anxiety is typically no freakish phenomenon it is our minds logical enraged plea not to be continuously and exhaustingly over
stimulated these are some of the things we may need to do to simplify our lives it is theoretically a privilege to have a lot of people to see and things to do it is also psychologically speaking exhausting and ultimately therefore rather dangerous the manner of expression is a little dated and brutal and one might want to quibble over the exact timings but this point from friedrich nietzsche remains acute today as always men fall into two groups slaves and free men whoever does not have two thirds of his day for himself is a slave whatever else
he may be a statesman a businessman an official or a scholar we need to recognize that what is physically possible for us to achieve in a day is not for that matter psychologically wise or plausible it may well be feasible to nip over to a foreign capital or two in a day and run a company alongside managing a household but nor should we be surprised if such routines ultimately contribute to a breakdown plenty of it of course at least seven hours or if we can't manage it we need at a minimum fully to recognize how
much we are deprived so that we won't aggravate our sorrows by searching for abstruse explanations for them we don't necessarily have to get divorced retrain in a completely different profession or move country we may just need to get some more rest what we're taking in when we check our phones is perhaps the single greatest contributor to our mental ill-health for most of history it was inconceivable that there could ever be such a thing as too much news information from political circles or foreign countries was rare prized and expensive but since the middle of the 20th
century News has been commodified and in the process it's become a major though still too little known risk to our mental survival every minute of every day presents us with untold options for filling our minds with the mania exploits disasters Furies reversals triumphs insanity and cataclysms of complete strangers all around our bure knighted planet always news organisations speak of a need to know and they need to know right now but what they've left out is our equally great and often even greater need not to know because we can't change anything because the stories are too
violent dispiriting and sad because our minds are fragile because we have responsibilities closer to home because we need to lead our own lives rather than being torn apart by the stories of the lives of others who are ultimately as remote from and irrelevant to us as the inhabitants of the Egyptian Court of Kingston affair ooh in late 2613 bc insomnia and anxiety are the minds revenge for all the thoughts we refuse to have consciously during the day in order to be able to find rest we need to carve off chunks of time where we have
nothing to do other than line bed with a pattern paper in order to think we need to consider three topics in particular firstly what's making me anxious secondly what's causing me pain and how and thirdly what's exciting me we need to sift through the chaotic contents of our minds every hour of living requires at least 10 minutes of sifting of course it might be pleasant to be extraordinary famous and world-beating but maybe it will be an even greater achievement to stay sane and kind we might opt not to conquer the world in favor of living
a longer and more serene life we're not backing away from a challenge we're simply shifting our sense of what the real challenge might be and more importantly whether real rewards may lie a quiet life isn't necessarily one of resignation or flight it may constitute a supremely wise recognition that the truly satisfying things are available away from the spotlight and the big cities on modest salaries and as far as possible from the manic sleepless competition to win the professional status race as we're discovering excitement can be fun for a time but also it kills simplicity is
true wisdom we may need a lot more naps do you need a detox from your devices our phone detox is designed to help give you a well-deserved break from your phone you
