Sooner or later, we all end up at Wit’s End.

It’s generally a good thing thought it doesn’t feel that way. It means something has to change. It’s the rock bottom of a perspective.

It wasn’t long ago I had read, “The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach To Living A Good Life” by Mark Manson. I’m a little surprised I didn’t write about it since it jives so well with my own observations about life.

His follow up book, “Everything is F*cked“, also fit my own observations within my life.

It’s all about what one cares about. What one gives a f*ck about. It’s about priorities and how they impact our worldviews.

Thus, I was surprised when I found that there is a movie about “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”.

Well f*ck. 🙂

So I watched it, and if you do watch it – for those of you who don’t read – you’ll see some pretty good examples of worldviews, like that of Hiroo Inada who fought for decades in a war that was long over because he never got new orders that he thought were credible.

Life is largely about expanding and changing our own perspectives, changing our inner worldviews to suit the actuality of the world around us.

Yet there’s more to it than that, at least for me.

When we’re interacting with others, what the other people are concerned about becomes a driving force. Collectively, this explains everything from political parties to football teams. On individual levels, it explains relationships that have a bigger ‘us’ and ‘them’ associated with them.

The famous story of Romeo and Juliet was about both Romeo and Juliet valuing their relationship more than what divided the groups they belonged to by accident of birth into families. I hate reading Shakespeare but he has some great plot lines.

It’s about what they cared about, their priorities, etc.

Of course, that’s fiction. Some even say it’s good fiction, if they like reading Shakespeare’s prose (I don’t). Yet all around us we see it all the time if we decide to… get ready… care about it. I’ve seen marriages go to divorce over one side of the family, or both. I’m pretty sure if you look around you’ll see that as at least a factor too.

Negotiation in business is a lot about what people care about. For example, I have had some fairly good ideas and still do for technology and business, and I’m sure if I presented them to some venture capitalists I’d get maybe a chance at doing them – but I would have to sacrifice what’s most important to me in assuring they achieved what I considered fruition of the ideas, so I don’t do that. I’ve seen too many good ideas twisted by venture capitalist control. I’d rather fail on my own rather than be driven by market forces and the whims of those that care more about the bottom line than the idea.

It’s all a balancing act of who cares more about what. Maybe I could have been excessively rich, maybe I still could be, but making loads of money has never really been my goal – something which has disappointed people and even had family members on my father’s side consider me a ‘failure’. I could do what they did, but intellectually it just never excited me. Having a new thing isn’t that exciting to me, therefore money isn’t that exciting to me.

I don’t want to see the Titanic. I know the story, and if I’m curious those unmanned submersibles give pretty good video.

Back to Wit’s End, which is how we started this. If you find yourself at Wit’s End, it means something has to change, something is untenable, and when you find yourself wishing other people would just do ‘what they should’, the only person you really have control over is the one at Wit’s End.

You.

And the only thing you can really do when you’re at Wit’s End is find another way to be.

That’s life.

Oh, congratulations to Mark Manson. A movie? Well, I didn’t see that one coming!