It seems that perfection would be attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away. —Antoine de St. Exupery, Terre des Hommes, 1939 I keep coming back to this one. Not because it is particularly deep — we have all heard the version about a masterpiece being complete when there is nothing left to add — but because it got me thinking about the opposite direction, which is the one I actually find harder. ...
“We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.” I came across this quote from Buckminster Fuller a few days ago and it has been sitting with me ever since. Not because it is profound in some new way — I have heard variations of it before — but because it feels increasingly urgent to actually live by it rather than just nod along. The way I read it now, trying to figure out what to do with my life, is less about grand architectural visions and more about the small daily choices that add up to whatever kind of future I end up with. It is easy to drift. It is easy to let other people’s plans for you, or the general momentum of things, carry you somewhere you did not choose. And then one day you look up and you are somewhere you never intended to be and you wonder how that happened. ...