Steven Johnson encourages us to think across multiple scales of experience when reading 19th-century novels. I agree and I’d argue Don Quixote, written in the e

Steven Johnson encourages us to think across multiple scales of experience when reading 19th-century novels. I agree and I’d argue Don Quixote, written in the early 1600s, was the prototype. Don Quixote has always been one of my favorite books because it genuinely entertains me on a deep level. Every time I return to it, I’m pulled into a world that’s funny, sad, strange, and timeless. Long before modern psychology, Cervantes captured the messy, conflicted inner life of someone trying to make sense of a changing world. Books like this still matter, not just as stories, but as a way to practice seeing the world in layers, something that helps us stay grounded and think more clearly in today’s fast-moving, story-saturated world.