/lit/ - Literature

>>22814061
>is it even possible to find something like this without feeling like the book was written in a much more favourable time for life compared to today?
It's a matter of taste and what problems you have in life, but personally I think Dickens is a good example. His time and culture was similar to ours in many ways: cold atheistic individualists thinking about their own interests in industrial cities. Many conditions then were far worse than ours. Yet his characters often shine with hope, curiosity, good-will, innocence and kindness despite poor external conditions. They are highly dramatised and unrealistic - but the message remains: see the good in people, be good, smile at a stranger, offer to help an old lady across the street. Put your phone down, be attentive in conversation and learn to be curious about people and want the best for them. Be a beacon of light when the rest of the world seems dim. Even by starting with one positive act every day.