Why You Should Turn To Art During Dark Times

The world has a million reasons for you to interpret our time here as one riddled with cruelty. 

You will encounter people and events that will cause you to lose faith in virtues like honesty, respect, integrity, joy, and love. 

The antidote to this negative world view lies in cultivating a never ending sense of curiosity and wonder. There is an arena where you can strengthen curiosity and wonder and it can be found in works of art, great books, and pieces of music that send shivers across your body.

If you want to see more joy in your world, read one of these: 

• The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy

• A Gentleman In Moscow

• A Thousand Splendid Suns

• Horns

• War and Peace

You will gain far more out of these than any self-help / self-improvement book. Those have value but they are dorky and provide answers for life in a vacuum. The information becomes outdated immediately after it is published. 

Fiction is timeless, it has randomness as a key theme. It’s always some form of: Hero sets out on adventure —> Hero faces a life threatening abyss that was previously unforeseeable —> Hero steps into abyss and comes out a better version of himself. 

The insights you gain from War and Peace or A Gentlemen In Moscow will cause you to reflect on your own way of living in both today’s time and 100 years into the future. 

Those stories reflect the same challenges you face, but fear and pessimism fed to you through social media & news cause you to shy away from stepping into the fog of the unknown. Reading great books reminds you that your path requires darkness and that your own magnificence is cultivated by walking through a thorn covered valley and not by scrolling Instagram or watching CNN tell you what you should hate. 

The shift is in how you speak to yourself about the unknown is this:

• Oh fuck, what will happen tomorrow? 

• Woah! What will happen tomorrow, it could be anything!

Nurture curiosity and wonder. They are the key to the life you desire. 

If you’re looking for some juice on Iran and this mounting global conflict, put down your novel and tune in to this conversation I recorded with Professor Javier De La Puerta about this shit show unfolding before our eyes.

If you have a moment to review my show on Spotify, it helps me out greatly. Thanks, y’all.

-DR