4.
WE CAN’T FIND everything we need to round out our humanity in the present. There are attitudes, ideologies, modalities of feeling and philosophies of mind for which we must journey backwards across the centuries, through the corridors of reference libraries, past forgotten museum cabinets filled with rusting suits of medieval armour, along the pages of second-hand books marked with the annotations of their now-deceased owners or up to the altars of half-ruined and moss-covered temples. We need to balance contact with the ever-changing pixels on our screens with the pages of heavy hardback books that proclaim, through their bindings and their typefaces, that they have something to say that will still deserve a place in our thoughts tomorrow.
5.
WE NEED RELIEF from the news-fuelled impression that we are living in an age of unparalleled importance, with our wars, our debts, our riots, our missing children, our after-premiere parties, our IPOs and our rogue missiles. We need, on occasion, to be able to rise up into space in our imagination, many kilometres above the mantle of the earth, to a place where that particular conference and this particular epidemic, that new phone and this shocking wildfire, will lose a little of their power to affect us – and where even the most intractable problems will seem to dissolve against the aeons of time to which the view of other galaxies attests.
6.
WE SHOULD AT times forgo our own news in order to pick up on the far stranger, more wondrous headlines of those less eloquent species that surround us: kestrels and snow geese, spider beetles and black-faced leafhoppers, lemurs and small children – all creatures usefully uninterested in our own melodramas; counterweights to our anxieties and self-absorption.
A flourishing life requires a capacity to recognize the times when the news no longer has anything original or important to teach us; periods when we should refuse imaginative connection with strangers, when we must leave the business of governing, triumphing, failing, creating or killing to others, in the knowledge that we have our own objectives to honour in the brief time still allotted to us.
Picture Credits
Akg-images/Erich Lessing 15.2; akg-images/Pirozzi 11.3; Alamy/View Pictures 2.3; Bridgeman Art Library/De Agostini 11.4; Bridgeman/Louvre, Paris 11.2; Bridgeman/Musée de la Tesse, Le Mans 16.2; Bridgeman/Musée du Petit-Palais, Paris 8.3; Bridgeman/Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels 7.5, 7.6; Bridgeman/National Gallery, London 1.1; Bridgeman/Royal Geographical Society, London 7.1; Bridgeman/Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven 17.1; © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto/Flowers, London/Paul Kuhn, Calgary 10.2: (Detail from the diptych 10 ab); Cascade News, Manchester 15.1; Corbis 11.1, 17.2; Getty Images 8.1; © Jacqueline Hassink 10.1: (from The Table of Power (1993–5), 6 December 1994); Nico Hogg 2.2; INS News Agency, Reading 15.3; © KIK-IRPA, Brussels 11.7; © Magnum Photos/Stuart Franklin: 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 8.6; PA Photos: 3.1, 4.1, 6.1, 8.5, 15.4, 16.3; Benedict Redgrove/Wired © The Condé Nast Publications Ltd 10.3; Carol Rosegg/Shakespeare Theatre Company, Washington, DC 6.3; Ross Parry Agency, West Yorkshire 16.1; David Shankbone 9.1; Shutterstock 2.1; © Stephanie Sinclair/VII Photo 8.4; Pete Souza/White House Photo Office 8.7; Topfoto 8.2, 11.5; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven 11.6; Jenny Zarins 19.1: (from Polpo: A Venetian Cookbook (Of Sorts) by Russell Norman, Bloomsbury, 2012. Reproduced by kind permission).
About the Author
Alain de Botton is the author of nonfiction works on subjects ranging from love and travel to architecture and philosophy. His bestselling books include How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Art of Travel and The Architecture of Happiness. He lives in London, where he founded The School of Life and Living Architecture.
Visit the Author: www.alaindebotton.com
The School of Life: www.theschooloflife.com
Living Architecture: www.living-architecture.co.uk
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Also Available in eBook Format by Alain de Botton
The Architecture of Happiness • 978-0-307-48156-6
The Art of Travel • 978-0-307-48166-5
The Consolations of Philosophy • 978-0-307-83350-1
How Proust Can Change Your Life • 978-0-307-83349-5
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work • 978-0-307-37830-9
Religion for Atheists • 978-0-307-90710-3
Status Anxiety • 978-0-307-49133-6
A Week at the Airport • 978-0-307-74269-8
For More Information on Pantheon Books
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By the same author
Essays in Love
How Proust Can Change Your Life
The Consolations of Philosophy
The Art of Travel
Status Anxiety
The Architecture of Happiness
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
A Week at the Airport
Religion for Atheists
How to Think More about Sex
Art as Therapy