I recently finished reading The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. I read it slowly, because was my bathroom book (sorry if that’s too much information, but it’s a great way to read important but not terribly gripping books) but also because it just wasn’t very good.
I know, I know, it’s a spiritual classic and all that, but honestly it was dull, repetitive and in places heretical. But my main problem with it was that its advice seems designed to induce clinical depression in susceptible people. I’ve been struggling with depression myself, recently (all stabilised now, thank you for your concern), which made me even less approving of the advice that you should cut out everything in your life that brings you joy, from simple innocent pleasures to friends. Friends!
According to this book, anything nice at all, including healthy interpersonal relationships, is just a distraction from focusing on God. (Take for example, the advice “You must remove yourself from acquaintances and from dear friends, and keep your mind free of all temporal consolation.”) Now, these things can be a distraction, but you have to balance that against the fact that we actually need friends and daily pleasures and a certain amount of entertainment if we are to remain mentally healthy. And mental illness certainly doesn’t improve your relationship with God, take it from me.
So I’m not recommending that you read it. At the same time, there were some little nuggets of wisdom in it that I underlined (before I just started writing “no” in the margin) so I’ll share them with you below, and save you the trouble and the risk of reading the whole thing.
Words to live by
True peace, then is found in resisting passions, not in satisfying them.
No liberty is true and no joy is genuine unless it is founded in the fear of the Lord and a good conscience.
Anything done in charity, be it ever so small and trivial, is entirely fruitful inasmuch as God weighs the love with which a man acts rather than the deed itself.
Use temporal things but desire eternal things.
What you do, do well.
Know thyself
You give good advice to others, and you know how to strengthen them with words, but when unexpected tribulation comes to your door, you fail both in counsel and in strength.
All men praise patience though there are few who wish to practise it.
Often we do not know what we can stand, but temptation shows us who we are.
Not every desire which seems good should be followed immediately, nor, on the other hand, should every contrary affection be at once rejected.
At times we are moved by passion and we think it zeal.
The social media ones
Very often, sad to say, we are so weak that we believe and speak evil of others rather than good. Perfect men, however, do not readily believe every talebearer, because they know that human frailty is prone to evil and is likely to appear in speech.
It is more profitable to turn away from things which displease you and to leave to every man his own opinion than to take part in quarrelsome talk.
Do not let your peace of mind depend on the words of men. Their thinking well or badly of you does not make you different from what you are.
The quiet time one
If you cannot recollect yourself continuously, do so once a day at least, in the morning or in the evening. In the morning make a resolution and in the evening examine yourself on what you have said this day, what you have done and thought, for in these things perhaps you have offended God and those about you.
The Atomic Habits ones
Habit is overcome by habit.
Arise! Begin at once and say: “Now is the time to act, now is the time to fight, now is the proper time to amend.”
The Spock one
It often happens that a man seeks ardently after something he desires and then when he has attained it he beings to think that is is not at all desirable.
My new bathroom book is Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, which I have high hopes for. But to find out what I think of it, you’ll probably have to wait until next year.
K C Murdarasi 
Blimey, that’s not great advice is it?
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