Five Pieces You Will Love on this Miraculous Monday (Oct. 16)
Horror, Gardening, People at the Core, Happiness, and . . . Should We Take Down Chesterton's Fence?
Friends,
I hope you enjoy my five hand-picked pieces for this Monday, each written by our fellow Substack writers. You can support them by reading and spreading the word. Thank you.
Ben
Spooky….
Do you want a great dose of horror two weeks before Halloween? Don’t miss
’s Double or Nothing. I will reveal no more…. Beware what you may find.From Black Thumb to Green Thumb: My Gardening Transformation, exposes Ivana’s Substack’s “enduring affair with . . . the artistry of nature” in the form of her gardening. It’s impossible not to fall into this piece, which paints a beautiful tapestry for understanding this relationship.
Ivana writes:
I came to realize that my love for my magical garden was, in fact, a love for the simplicity and beauty of the natural world. It was a love for the serene moments spent outdoors, surrounded by life in all its forms. I had fallen in love with the wonder of watching a tiny seed become a towering tree, and the enchantment of seeing a bloom emerge from a bud.
In Only People Matter,
describes the numbing pain of losing his father, whose life provided him this “most important lesson”:Only people matter. Everything else is secondary.
He continues:
[W]e create concepts that give meaning to the things we do. And then, what usually happens is these concepts will get a life and an identity of their own and we will forget that all of these big, important entities are just collections of people. A community, a company, even a country, or the whole of humanity is just a group of people with somewhat common interests.
I highly recommend this touching and challenging piece.
Joel Miller at
takes us on an adventure to understand the “simple” heuristic known as Chesterton’s Fence. Boiled to its essence, the principle advises:Do not remove a fence until you know why it was put there in the first place.
Chesterton’s Fence is profoundly important in politics, business, and other disciplines, as it requires decision-makers to consider the second-order effects of what might otherwise seem like a simple act – i.e. removing the fence. Miller explains all.
In What is Happiness Anyway?, Nat Persoglio (
), a UK-based journalist and editor, provides a touching and honest perspective on the meaning of happiness based on memories of her father, which take her in more directions than one.
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Want to read some more? Enjoy one of these recent posts:
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Ben, you’re doing the work of a whole pantheon of gods and demi-gods here. Love these curations, born only out of a genuine appreciation for the writing. An exercise in trust-building too, as I find myself clicking on the links you share bc I trust you. Keep it up 🙌
Thank you so much for the shout-out. This was one of the most difficult pieces to write for me and I hope it resonates with some. ❤️