The pervasive generality of the center-making process

There really is nothing else going on in the process which creates life — that when we make something, every single moment, every single act of attention, every single act of design — no matter at what scale — is controlled by our ability to make strong centers of everything we have to touch.

It is not necessarily easy to do. In many cases it is hard to pack in so many centers as are needed; easier to be lazy, and make a few centers while leaving all kinds of space littered about between them.
To succeed in re-arranging things so that everything is locked together with centers, so that every single part has life in itself because it is a living center — to prune a design, and look at it over and over again, searching for any little parts that are not centers — and then work at it, compressing, cutting, simplifying, rearranging, until every single part, and every part of every part, and every part between the parts are all centers. This is tremendously hard work.

#book/The Nature of Order/2 The process of creating life/10 Always making centers#