In this issue, we’re exploring all the nuances of simplicity - how it often eludes us but is ever present and available, ultimately our choice.

We sat across from one another, dark eyes transfixed and attentive to one another’s words, I to her native language, she to my adopted one. Twenty-five years later, with little contact and many countries in between, it was comforting, heartening, to be able to reconnect so effortlessly, as if our legs were just as toned as they had been back then, as if our skin were just as taught and smooth. As with our unadulterated appearances, we could be real with one another. In unhurr

I noticed my co-worker quickly walking toward my desk. Something was off. Normally, her hunched shoulders and downward gaze gave away the exhaustion and frustration she was feeling with her job. Now she was floating as she walked with confidence and a relaxed happy smile radiated from her face. I looked up with confusion and curiosity. She began to relate a conversation she had with her department’s top executive. “I was told what a great job I did going above and beyond in h

Have you ever been struck by sound that leaves you in a place of both longing and completion? A place where time seems to lengthen until it shifts dimensions and becomes light? A tunnel that narrows thought and understanding to a revelation that you never knew you needed? These questions might come off as complicated or at least rhetorical. Even as I reread these questions, my thoughts chastise me. Do I really want you to answer? In truth, I don’t want a yes or no, but I do w

For most of my adult life, I believed complexity was a sign of sophistication. Throughout my career in advertising and technology, complexity was equated to scale and capability. It meant you were operating at a high level. The more moving pieces you could manage, the more impressive your output felt, and the faster everything moved, the more validated that pace felt. Then my body broke down. Not in a dramatic way, but in the slow, quiet erosion resulting from living in a per

Simplicity arrived unannounced and sat down next to me for a cup of afternoon tea. I didn’t invite her, but it was a quiet day, and she knows that back gate is unlocked, the sliding door is open. The sky was overcast, and I settled beneath a blanket on the couch by the window with the last pages of a great memoir opened on my lap and no calls, no commitments, no carpe diems anywhere near me. “It’s so nice to see you here,” I greet her. I am sincere. “Yes, it’s been too long,”