Being Peace – Thích Nhất Hạnh (Or: How Not to Lose Your Mind in This Hellscape)

Let’s talk about paying attention. Not giving it, no. Paying it—because that’s what it is. A currency. And if you’re not careful, you’ll go broke spending it on useless garbage.

This isn’t me being dramatic. Every app, every algorithm, every politician, every crisis-of-the-week headline—they’re all trying to rob you blind. And they’re damn good at it.

But let’s rewind.

Thích Nhất Hạnh—Buddhist monk, poet, peace activist, mindfulness legend—understood this way before we started doomscrolling ourselves into oblivion. During the Vietnam War, he led a Buddhist peace delegation, got exiled, and still never lost his calm. Martin Luther King Jr. called him an “apostle of peace” and nominated him for a Nobel Prize.

This book is not a step-by-step self-help guide. It’s not a pep talk. It’s a quiet, sneaky little book that just sits there and somehow changes you.

It doesn’t tell you to meditate. It makes you want to.

It doesn’t try to fix you. It just shows you what’s already broken.

And it does this without yelling at you, which is impressive because, let’s be honest, most of us need to be yelled at.

💬 Quote to Ponder:

“The more we see, the more we understand. The more we understand, the easier it is for us to have compassion and love. Understanding is the source of love. Understanding is love itself.” – Thích Nhất Hạnh

Which pretty much means that if we keep seeing garbage, we’ll understand garbage, and then we’ll become garbage.

💡 Takeaway: Your Attention Is Being Mugged.

What are you paying attention to? And more importantly, who’s cashing in on it?

Think about it:

• You used to be what you eat.

• Now you’re what you consume online.

• And a lot of us are mentally malnourished.

Your brain is a VIP section, and you’ve been letting in every two-bit clickbait hustler and algorithm junk dealer that knocks on the door.

🎯 Exercise: The Art of the Almost-Fight

Here’s a fun (and slightly evil) experiment: the next time someone tries to bait you into an argument, don’t take the bait.

Instead, pause. Let the moment sit there, uncomfortable and unresolved. Let the other person dangle in the awkward silence of their own energy.

Then do one of the following:

🔹 Nod slowly like you’ve just heard something profound. Bonus points if you say, “Huh. Interesting.”

🔹 Ask a weirdly calm question. Something like, “What makes you feel so strongly about that?”

🔹 Pretend you didn’t hear them. Just look at them and say, “Sorry, what?” as if you’re making them repeat their own nonsense out loud.

Watch what happens.

Do they double down?

Do they back off?

Do they get confused and short-circuit?

Whatever they do, you win—because you didn’t pay them your attention. You kept it. And that’s the whole point.

Then, ask yourself: how much energy do I usually waste on conflicts I don’t even care about?

❓ Question: What’s something you’ve recently stopped paying attention to—whether it’s news, social media drama, or a person who drains your energy—and how has it changed your life?