Introducing Messy Elegance

I’ve also posted a possible book cover, below, so you can see what the finished product might eventually look like, and I’ll share another idea later as well. The title feels pretty dialed in at the moment, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it evolves as the project unfolds.

For the last couple of years I’ve been circling around a set of ideas about how people move toward depth in their lives in the middle of what seems like a world with fewer and fewer anchors to hold onto. For most of 2025 I stopped writing almost completely. My creative self, I suppose, was in a period of gestation.

During that time I spent a good deal of time thinking about what truly resonated with me. If I was going to devote the time, curiosity, and emotional energy required to write a book, I wanted to focus on something that genuinely mattered to me—something I wanted to understand more deeply myself.

At the center of it all is a simple observation: life is messy.

Sometimes we make the mess ourselves.
Sometimes the world does it for us.

Either way, things change. Certainties dissolve. The river we thought we could rely on dries up. Relationships that seemed rock solid sometimes turn out to be built on sand.

And yet something interesting happens.

Some people move through this mess much more gracefully than we seem able to manage. Their lives are far from perfect. They’ve faced the same disruptions and uncertainties the rest of us experience, and sometimes they’ve created their own difficulties along the way. But they seem to draw on something deeper that allows them to keep moving forward with curiosity, meaning, and even joy.

That’s what I mean by “messy elegance.”

It’s not perfection.
It doesn’t rely on wealth.
And it isn’t reserved for a lucky few.

Messy elegance recognizes that the messiness of life isn’t simply a problem to eliminate. Often it becomes the raw material for creativity, discovery, and growth. When we explore, experiment, and wander down unexpected paths, something interesting can emerge.

From that exploration elegant things appear: paint arrives on canvas; new organizations are formed; people discover what they love to do and what they are called to do.

It’s a lifelong skill—learning how to move again and again toward wholeness, toward deeper relationships, toward wisdom, spirituality, health, and meaning.

Both messy and elegant.

Not one or the other.
Both.

I suspect there are principles and practices that help us move in this direction. We can learn from the lives of others, from science, from the arts, from spirituality—from the entire messy world around us—how to “go deep.”

That’s why I’m writing this book.

Like many writers have said before me, I often discover what I think through the act of writing itself. Even more importantly, I learn through the process. And I learn from other people.

That’s where you come in.

For this project I’m trying something I’ve never done before. Instead of writing the entire book privately and only sharing it once it’s finished, I’m going to write in public.

Along the way I’ll share essays, reflections, and questions as the book develops. I’d love to hear what you think. What resonates? What feels incomplete? What perspectives might I be missing?

Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon sparked this approach for me. Writing in public feels like an experiment worth trying.

So I’m giving it a go.

A question to start the conversation

What do you think of the idea of messy elegance?

Can you think of people or situations where messy elegance seemed to be at work?

The best way to leave a comment and to become part of the conversation is to hop over to my Substack, Profound Living with Michael Kroth, where it will be easy to add to and comment on this and future essays.

Here's the link:  Profound Living with Michael Kroth

Over the coming months I’ll be sharing reflections, essays, and questions as this book develops. I'll also be posting other reflection, essays, and more here as well, not just copying essays from Substack.

Finally, this will very much be a work in progress. It won’t be perfect, and I’ll be learning along the way.

Which seems like an appropriate way to begin a book about messy elegance.

Note: In working on these essays I often think things through in conversation with ChatGPT. It helps me explore ideas, test structure, and tighten language, while the decisions, reflections, and final writing remain my own. Historically, authors have used editors, colleagues, relatives, and friends in much the same way—as thinking partners in the writing process. I think of ChatGPT as a kind of digital conversation partner. If you contribute to these discussions, you’ll be one of those conversation partners as well.

Source: Austin Kleon, Show Your Work! 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered. Workman Publishing, 2014.