The Wisdom of Insecurity - A Message for an Age of Anxiety / Alan Watts

RATINGS

Overall: 4/ 5 stars

Text Level: Medium

Entertainment: Medium

Self-Help: High

Page Count: 152

Is this book right for me and my inmate?

For many inmates dealing with daily anxiety over not having control of their future this book can help them learn to live in the now.

Buy on: Amazon

Finding the meaning of your future to bring a peaceful mind to the present.

For a large part of my life I have been dealing with anxiety. Sometimes it has led me to missing out on new relationships, work opportunities and great moments with family. Being incarcerated has only grown my levels of anxiety at times because now my future seems so in doubt. This book by Alan Watts deals with overcoming anxiety and finding the idea of one's future to hopefully build a peaceful state.

Many inmates have a feeling of an uncertain future that is out of their control. This leads to a life of anxiety and irrational actions that plague the minds of inmates. I think this feeling of not knowing what their future might hold for them existed on the outside, but only grows more painful while being incarcerated. As inmates we become so focused on trying to see our future that we lose sight of how to live in the now. This book offers us a chance to recognize the now and use it to its potential towards building an understanding of our future.

What I found very powerful about this book was the mix of self-help topics on dealing with anxiety and isolation and how the other brought them into a spiritual understanding. Watts talked about how faith plays a major role in overcoming anxiety and uncertainty. It made me realize how much of my own mental health suffering of the past came from my inability to place my faith in something greater than what I could only see at the moment. In the end I do feel that I do have a better understanding of my future after reading this book and my anxiety has been lowered. I hope other can read this book and gain from it like I did.

Book Quotes

“The truth is revealed by removing things that stand in its light, an art not unlike sculpture, in which the artist creates, not by building, but by hacking away."

"If we are open only to discoveries which will accord with what we know already, we may as well stay shut."