My Minimalism Journey

A Minimalism Lifestyle

Sometimes I look around me and feel like I am just spinning my wheels. However, when I look objectively at things I have to accept that I am solidly in the middle of my journey. There are plenty of things that I can improve on and I continue to make mistakes, but I have come a long way from where I started. If you want to see the house I lived in when I graduated high school, watch the scene in the movie Milk where James Franco jumps naked into the pool. (I don’t remember the actual point of the scene – and no, I didn’t see him naked, but he did ask me for our wifi password!) Today I live in a very average (and absolutely lovely!) flat in the city and I lead a relatively low-key lifestyle.

My dreams and desires weren’t always in line with making the world a better place. I was comfortable living a life of luxury and my goals were aimed at making that life more luxurious and more exciting. I wanted to be a trailblazer living life in the fast lane. I was confident enough to believe I could find a prince to marry if that’s what I wanted. My dreams were bigger still – to become a name as well known as Marie Curie or Albert Einstein. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when all of this started changing, but as I got into my early 20s my perspective started to shift. As my world expanded and I traveled to new places, met new people, and had new experiences, my understanding of life and of people began to change.

First, I had to recognize that I already had more than enough. I didn’t need more things or more money or more friends. I always had enough to eat, I never worried about paying my rent, and there was always extra for fun. So why wasn’t I happy? Why did I have the constant drive to get more from life? What was missing? I wasn’t living life for myself. I had set expectations about what my life should look like. I coldly calculated the fastest path to my destination without thinking about how I would feel when I got there. I based my dreams and desires on what I thought I should want instead of what truly lit me up inside.

That led to the second realization: the destination is bullshit. Life is about the journey and if you focus on the end goal the whole time, then you miss out on the actual experience of life. You lose the opportunity to enjoy the entire experience. Now I don’t mean to say that having goals is pointless, but I am saying that it is important that we respect the journey. It does matter how you choose to get there, primarily for your own mental health. The end does not justify the means, so stop sacrificing yourself on the altar of commercialism.

I began to see the facade, the hamster wheel that keeps us spinning in place. Everyone is selling themselves, striving to be the most unique, the expert, the one with the answers, or the life-changing product. We are told to think of ourselves individually as brands. What? I am a person with feelings and emotions and I shouldn’t feel like I need to take a public relations course in order to interact with other people. I also started to become all too aware of the gap between what I had access to and what the rest of the world had access to… money, people, and things.

I feel a bit self-conscious at this point. I was lucky to be born to two hard-working parents that succeeded financially in life. I am just riding that wave, although I took advantage of opportunities and turned them into bigger and better things. My heart breaks for the world’s children that don’t have security and comfort. Now learning ways to balance this inequality and helping people heal and grow is where I desire to throw my resources. We’ve lost community in our day-to-day life because we are too busy protecting ourselves. In what ways can we come back together again? How can we offer a basic level of security to everyone?