January commonplace

Maggie Smith, Pep Talk:

It’s impossible for me to talk about writing without talking about living. It’s all connected. Collectively, our choices make our lives what they are. Who do we love and spend our time with? Where do we live and with whom? What is our work? What do we spend our days doing?

Changing one of these things changes everything. Changing one of these things changes your life.

Recently, on a long walk, I realized that my life is like a poem in another way, too: My life, like a poem, is small and enormous.

Let me explain. In a poem, counterintuitively, compression creates expansion. A single image or metaphor opens up into a wide open space. Less is often more. The more I edited down my life to the essential elements, and the more I revised away the extraneous, the bigger it got.

Leo Babauta:

You don’t need any material things in order to slow down. You just do less, and savor each activity. Take some breaths, and give yourself more space. Leave space between things, and enjoy that in between space.

Notice when there are moments of quiet, and savor that as well. Create moments of quiet if needed.

This is the benefit of living a simple life, this slowness and spaciousness, but it can also be a path to the simple life. Slow down to simplify.

Sarah Addison Allen, Other Birds:

Stories aren’t fiction. Stories are fabric. They are the white sheets we drape over our ghosts so we can see them.