Everybody should read the screenplay for American Beauty. It’s probably the most expertly written screenplay in the history of film. You can buy it here (UK) or here (US), because I constantly find myself referencing it, or you can get a cheaper and more immediate copy here. And isn’t it wonderful?

It’s hard to stay mad, when there’s so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst…

…and then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life…

You have no idea what I’m talking about, I’m sure. But don’t worry…

You will someday.

Everybody should listen to Everybody Hurts by R.E.M., because it’s beautiful, and it’s just what all you angsty teens need, because it was written just for you.

When you’re sure you’ve had enough of this life
Well hang on
Don’t let yourself go, ’cause everybody cries
And everybody hurts
Sometimes

Everybody should read The Little Prince, because it’s true. Because it’s unpretentious and profound, it’s childish (because grown-ups really are quite extraordinary) and simple and it’s about love, and what else is there to be about?

The little prince went away to look again at the roses.

“You are not at all like my rose,” he said. “As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made a friend, and now he is unique in all the world.”

And the roses were very much embarrassed.

“You are beautiful, but you are empty,” he went on. “One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you - the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing.

“Because she is my rose.”

Everybody should watch Citizen Kane. It is one of the most wonderful examples of what people, mere people can do when they truly make an effort to see the beauty and the potential and the utter amazing possibilities of something that had always been so mundane before. It is the greatest film of all time because, without it, there would be no more great films. And it is utterly astonishing.

“Rosebud.”

Everybody should feel the rough slide of steel strings beneath their fingers with a guitar rested in their lap; they should know, at least once a week, the contentment of turning the final page of a beautiful book; everybody should understand the beautiful realisation that they have bettered themselves in a way they couldn’t conceive of because they had never before realised that what they were doing was wrong; everybody should be part of a crowd that moves like a wave and rides on itself to the rhythm of music performed by a live band, and that band should be Marillion, playing an eighteen minute perfect rendition of Ocean Cloud.

All of these things it is up to you to discover only by your own initiative. But there is one more thing that everybody should do, and it is clichÈ and predictable and absolutely fucking wonderful, and it seems not so simple:

Everybody should fall in love. And if it seems that it doesn’t suit this list, it is because it is misunderstood. It needs to be sought, it needs to be coaxed; it is out there looking for you, and when you look for it yourself, it will appear…

There. Wasn’t that profound?