You may know one of my favorite writers, Antoine de Saint-Exupery. He said, “Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
His writing is beautifully lyrical, yet it is not fussy or overdone. The notion of reducing something to its essence is powerful. We can debate about whether or not perfection actually exists, but the * feeling * of perfection definitely exists . . . and it’s well worth paying attention to.
Consider something in which you’re engaged. How would it be well-served by taking away something? For example, taking away demands on a relationship, decoration in a room, embellishment in a story, or requirements for you to live up to everyone else’s pictures of how your life * should * be.
We might find, as Saint-Exupery implies, that less is more . . . and that beauty and perfection are a function of brilliant and intentional refinement. How might the beauty of the situations mentioned above be revealed by removing anything that does not serve the highest and best purpose of the situation itself?