reminders for the soul

Zen can essentially be reduced to three things.

Everything changes;

everything is interconnected;

pay attention to it.

Only silence enables us to say something unheard of. The compulsion of communication, by contrast, leads to the reproduction of the same, to conformism:

So it’s not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop

Byung-Chal Han • Vita Contemplativa

"Write in a way that comes naturally," "Revise and rewrite," "Do not explain too much," and the rest; above all, the cleansing, clarion "Be clear."

William Strunk JR. and E.B. White • The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition

"Only silence enables us to say something unheard of. The compulsion of communication, by contrast, leads to the reproduction of the same, to conformism:

So it’s not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop... See more

Vita Contemplativa

Good writing is specific and concrete.

William Zinsser • Writing to Learn

Taste Is the New Intelligence

stepfanie tyler open.substack.com

Highlights:

The frontier isn’t volume—it’s discernment. And in that shift, taste has become a survival skill.

Not taste in the superficial sense—not trend-chasing, not aesthetic mimicry, not expensive minimalism for the sake of status. Real taste. The kind that signals coherence. Clarity. The ability to choose what matters in a world drowning in what doesn’t.

Because when abundance is infinite, attention is everything. And what you give your attention to—what you consume, what you engage with, what you amplify—becomes a reflection of how you think.

We associate aesthetic with surface. But good taste is deep structure. It’s the throughline in someone’s life. You can see it in the design of their home, the cadence of their speech, the way they treat people, the books on their shelves.

Underneath all of this is something deeper: taste as a spiritual orientation. Not in the religious sense, but in the felt sense of alignment. Of knowing what your energy wants. Of feeling what’s harmonious and what’s out of tune.

The idea of research as leisure activity has stayed with me because it seems to describe a kind of intellectual inquiry that comes from idiosyncratic passion and interest. It’s not about the formal credentials. It’s fundamentally about play.

The scariest moment is always just before you start. After that, things can only get better.

Stephen King • On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft (A Memoir of the Craft (Reissue))