Dear Millennials, Please Read

Art by Mouni Feddag for a letter by Alain de Botton

More and more of our society is centered on pictures and images, which is a beautiful thing. Take Instagram for example, its visual driven content is powerful to deliver pleasure in large doses. It certainly changes our relationship to information and attention; it changes what we are looking to place our attention on.

The content of information absorbed will essentially become the content within you.

But my dear friends, some of the most important parts of life cannot be captured in pictures such as ideas, insights, logic, reason, intelligence and wisdom. These cannot be photographed, or illustrated. They have to be conveyed in words, arranged in an orderly string, and can only be understood by those who have placed the required amount of time and attention on reading. There’s something else, there’s something more beyond pictures. How could we gain wisdom and the brilliance of humanity in the age awash with information, information that is not necessarily beneficial to our well-being if we only direct the attention bank we have outside of work, study, and necessary daily errands to visual-driven social media?

Reading opens up opportunities we have always dreamed for: time traveling and telepathy. It offers a kind of exchange between consciousnesses, it allows us to talk to each other irregardless of time, and about stuff we can’t normally talk about in daily life.

Reading stimulates. It stimulates a keen desire for life, no matter what phase you are at, it urges you to live and move with the grandness of humanity.

Reading keeps humanity alive. The right kind of written words marshal your intellectual and spiritual resources, it will make you stronger. So please, read on, my fellow Millennials.

Picking the right kind of book is equivalent of picking the right kind of habit, behavior, mannerism — it takes a certain virtue. Picking the wrong ones will shape you differently. The content of information absorbed will essentially become the content within you. From years of reading both virtuous and non-virtuous books, I hereby recommend you a list that is truly worth your time, titles that might evoke appreciation within you to praise of life’s bizarre beauty: