My Word for 2024 - Elegancing

“Elegance.”

It just popped into my mind, like it had been fermenting, rolling around in the back of my mind.

I was at one of Judith Valente’s wonderful retreats, Writing The Prologue To Your New Year,^{1 *} and she had asked us to review 2023, to identify events which had been significant for us, and to look for patterns or places where we felt God touching our lives.  She let us know that on the day of the retreat we would share “share a word that we would like to keep close to our heart as a kind of guiding light for us in the coming year.”²

See Judy’s essay about the retreat, Words to Live By in 2024³

And there it was for me. Elegance.

Since then, I’ve been playing with the word. Elegance. Elegant. Elegancer, Eleganting. To Elegant. Eleganted. Elegantly. One who elegances, making this or that eleganter. The elegant (as in, a type of person or group of people). To elegance. Elegancive.

Adjective. Adverb. Noun. Verb. var.

I imagine there will be more.

I had written a couple of essays about elegance in 2018, Elegance and Naturally Elegant⁴, and had always intended to come back to explore this idea but had never. Now, it seems, I must.

Here I will just tee up some thoughts about elegance which I plan to elaborate in later writing.

Minimalism, Simplicity, Elegance

What are the differences and similarities between the terms minimalism, simplicity, and elegance?  They aren’t exactly the same, I don’t think, but they are related. We’ll start with Joshua Becker, who I have followed over the years and learned much from. He defines minimalism as “At its core, being a minimalist means intentionally promoting the things we most value and removing everything that distracts us from it.”  He says simplicity is, “. . . about creating space in your life for what matters most. It’s about clearing the clutter from our homes and hearts so we can live with intention and purpose.”  As a starting point for elegance, I like Patrick House’s definition, “simplicity plus capaciousness.”⁵

It will be fun to play with these and related ideas.

The Qualities of Elegance

For now, I’ll just list some of the qualities of elegance (or perhaps these are just characteristics I aspire to…) I’m thinking about. They are ideas which resonate with me.

Elegance to me today means:

• Simplicity Plus (the capaciousness part). Just the right amount, not too much and not too little – Goldilocks, lagom6, the Golden Mean (Aristotle)

• Harmony out of messiness – everyone fits together, is aligned, unified, leverages the other parts, together they become something more than each element, hence there is synergy involved, appears effortless

• Four “C’s”: Calling (as in what am I called to do or be?), Culling, Curating, Contributing

• Style – has taste, has voice, embodies one’s identity

• Adaptive – rests on principles of simplicity, adapts to change in self or situation

• Paradox: Serious Fun, Dignity and irreverence, sophistication and “meat dresses” (well...I'm not absolutely sure about this one, but will leave it in for musing upon)

• Intentionality. Purposeful action.

• The Beauty of Depth, the Depth of Beauty

• The manifestation of suffering and love

Some Arenas to Explore Elegance

• Elegant Day-to-Day Living

• Relational Elegance – Elegant Relationships

• Design Elegance – elegant design for healthy, spiritual, loving, and wise living over the life course.

• Elegant Theory, Thought, Theology

My Motto for 2024 – “Take More Time Cover Less Ground” by Carrie Newcomer⁶

During the retreat, Judy played Carrie Newcomer’s song “Take More Time Cover Less Ground,” and immediately I knew it was what I needed to keep front and center for 2024. At the risk of being too autobiographical (heck, that’s never stopped me before), my whole life has been a struggle between being messy and organized, between having razor-like focus and undisciplined wandering, between scattered exploration and pulling disparate ideas and concepts and what I’ve learned together into an organized, more simple way. I am eager to learn and therefore am susceptible to the distraction of a new idea or article or author or this….or that…or...

That typically means I cover a lot of ground more superficially than I want, without doing the depth of work (see Cal Newport Deep Work) I must try to take all that and create something that can make a positive difference.

I'm not sophisticated and I don't aspire to be in any fancy way, so that's a problem I'll have to think about. Simple, humble, elegance is what I'm interested in knowing more about and, through that, knowing more about myself.

You should listen to Carrie’s song; I love the music and the lyrics.  

We live in a world careening toward superficiality and momentous change with little collective pondering and considerable reaction to the headline of the moment. These are momentous moments and terrifying times. We have complex problems the solutions of which are too often highjacked by political expediency, powerful people, and a culture that more and more seems to value immediate gratification and to forget about long term value and viability. 

We need elegant solutions to the challenges we face both personally and as a society, and we need the discipline to carry them out.  That means taking the time it takes. Working toward developing an elegant mindset, values, and principles for living seems at least one possible approach.



 “Take More Time Cover Less Ground”

by Carrie Newcomer