Little Happier: Don’t Tear Down a Fence Until You Know Why It Was Put Up

Happier with Gretchen Rubin

On a demanding backpacking trip, I saw an illustration of the principle sometimes call “Chesterton’s Fence”: Don’t take down a fence unless you know why it was put there in the first place. If you don’t know why a fence was placed there, you won’t understand the consequences of taking it down.

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