Absorb into yourself the world’s full richness and goodness and fun and genius, so that when someone tells you it’s not worth fighting for, you will stick up for it, protect it, run to its defence, because it is your world they’re talking about, then watch that world continue to pour itself into you in gratitude. A little smart vampire full of raging love, amazed by the world – that will be you, my young friend, the earth shaking at your feet.

I suggest something both very simple yet endlessly wonderful. Walking. ‘Going for a walk’ has a banal sound to it, like walking down the mall to buy a t shirt, but it can be vastly more than that. In the city one can be a flâneur, drifting through the streets, contemplating the crowds and the urban scene. Yet I think walking in nature is more likely to encourage contemplative absorption, walking, not to get anywhere in particular, free from emails and messages. Contemplation and conversation can flourish there. It is an old, obvious and very real way to be with and by oneself, to meditate, to see and hear a world that lies beyond the babble of the digital arcade. I don’t know if Aristotle would think it was noble, but I recommend it.