"The Wisdom of Insecurity" by Alan W. Watts

I’m sure most self-help authors owe a lot to this thin, little book. First published in 1951, The Wisdom of Insecurity begins with Alan W. Watts describing the anxious pace of life—and the futility of this anxiety. I found it surprising to realize he was describing the world 60 years ago. Maybe it’s comforting to realize the past wasn’t much rosier than today. Watts attacks a lot of modern life in the first chapter, but this is important, because the rest of the book proposes a new way of thinking.

The simplest idea I took away is to not let the past and future crowd out the present. “If I am so busy planning how to eat next week that I cannot fully enjoy what I am eating now, I will be in the same predicament when next week’s meals become ‘now.’ ” This may be an “obvious” idea, but entire lives can be built around preparing for a future that is never appreciated when it finally arrives.

A lot of Watts’ ideas are Eastern, though he reinterprets Christian ideas, too. I appreciated his distinction between belief and faith, where faith becomes the wiser choice. Before reading this book, I might have been guilty of using those two words interchangeably. Some books make me realize I know very little, while this one also tried to convince me of how little I can control; accepting both is a huge relief.

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Book review by David.