The artistic creation of the poet, painter, photographer, and writer is a reflection of the artist’s inner world. The agenda of consciousness that spurs all forms of art is not to represent the outward appearance of things, but to portray its inward significance to the creator. A great poem, painting, photograph, and written composition fully express what the creator feels, in the deepest sense, about the distinctively depicted image that captured their imagination.

Writers and other artistic personalities historically attempted to describe art, what consist of, and inform us how a person creates art. If art is so difficult to describe and quantify, why do we feel compelled to attempt to describe the ineffable? At its core, does all art represent an attempt to communicate the unsayable? Is any discussion about art absurd? Is classifying a piece of writing as literature simply another form of elitism?

Literature provides a person with a conceptual framework for recognizing human beings recurrent challenges in life. Reading good literature deepens a person’s understanding of the variable ways that somebody might respond to circumstances in their world, thereby adding to their own potential intellectual and spiritual depth and expands their understanding of the nuances of their own personal behavior.

Literature supplements the lives of people and enables us to feel connected with the world. Shared stories blunt a sense of tragic aloneness, and endow us with the tools to understand our humanness. Reading about the lives of other people acquaints us with the hardships of other people. The authorial voices of narrative prose express our shared feelings of deprivation

Most artists wish to receive acclaim for a body of work that will withstand the test of time. Ancient Greece culture produced many works of fiction, history, mythology, drama, and philosophy that scholars consider timeless classics. The classics of Ancient Greece greatly influenced the development of Western Civilization.

People tend to mistake reading and writing with living passively. Words are actions. Language ignites thoughts and channels emotions. Each sentence written by a literary master is an act of rebellion against the intolerable inadequacies and the outrageous injustices of life. Contemplative reading and writing creates channels of empathy and decreases our sense of aloneness. Many liberating social movements trace their origins back to a heart-wrenching piece of literature.

The study of philosophy represents an extended mediation on death. The study of literature teaches us that life is absurd, because humankind possesses the foreknowledge that we each owe a death. It is the poets, persons vested with divine inspiration, whom teach us how to live, by boldly experiencing and dutifully recording all the vibrant sensations of life.

We live mindfully by harvesting evocative scenes to pay attention to including the mountains and oceans, flowers and trees, love and friendship, music and literature, art and poetry.

We all act as independent learners in charge of designing our autodidactic curricula. Reading the books written by the prophetic genius of history including the literary masterpieces and philosophical treatises awakens the mind. Reading can act as a gateway drug leading to writing and expansion of a personal state of conscious awareness.