A Way of Seeing

There’s a dissonance when the world is breaking —

and you’re still making things.

Still choosing color.

Still adjusting the space between letters.

When people are displaced, erased, detained, silenced…

When cruelty becomes policy, and care gets cut from the budget… Design can feel small. Beauty can feel irrelevant.

But beauty isn’t a distraction from grief.

It’s a way of standing inside it — and choosing not to harden. The gesture of a line, the pause offered by white space, the generosity of a quiet, intentional campaign — these are not accidents.

They are offerings.

They are ways of saying: You are not forgotten.

This was made with you in mind.

Beauty isn't confined to design.

It’s in music made for no one and everyone.

In the joy of a child making a good mess.

In the old tree no one planted, still standing.

In the bird that sings anyway.

It’s in architecture that considers light.

In landscapes shaped for community — not control.

In art that doesn't look away.

In laughter that bubbles up — even now.

Beauty doesn’t belong to any one culture, but every culture has held it close.

It is not a possession. It's a perception. A way of seeing beyond the self.

In stillness with what is, beauty becomes the quiet revolution that saves us.✦

---

The version of this Little Letter sent by email carried a melody to invite stillness, a conversation with Maggie Rogers on creativity and nature’s quiet rhythms, plus a sweet moment where a producer sees the spark in Maggie before the spotlight. Want the next one in your inbox? Sign up here.

Pass this on to someone who walks the world a bit like you do.