We invite you to read the thoughts of Brett McKay, who has his own special view on minimalism.
Minimalism is a lifestyle/trend, and like any phenomenon, it sometimes gains popularity and sometimes declines. In the past few years, minimalism has become popular. On the Internet, you can find many articles called “100 things you should definitely get rid of” that are in high demand.
Even I wrote a couple of times on my blog about minimalism and generally have nothing against it. There is something inspiring about the idea of “life without excess”, and it certainly has its advantages.
This will help you avoid becoming a weak-willed consumer, there will be no really unnecessary things in your life, your brain will not be overloaded with useless information, you will be able to be mobile and travel lightly, save money and focus on what is really valuable.
But despite all the advantages, not everything is so rosy.
Excessive minimalism is the prerogative of wealthy people
The first thing that made me look more critically at minimalism was an article I read a couple of years ago in The New York Times. It started like this:
“I live in a studio apartment that is 420 square feet. I have a transformer bed. I have 10 small dishes that I use to make salads and main courses. When guests come to see me, I take out my folding table. I don’t have CDs or DVDs, and now I only have 10% of the books I used to have.”
The author of this article, Graham Hill, then talks about how his life today is fundamentally different from what he used to lead. Having become rich in the 90s, Hill started buying things that were not cheap at all and at some point he found that his life was literally littered with all sorts of expensive junk.
That all changed when he fell in love with a woman from Andorra: he simply packed his bags into his backpack to follow her around the world. Traveling lightly, he reconsidered his attitude towards things and is now consciously living lightly.
After Hill’s story, a short essay by Charlie Lloyd caught my eye.
“Wealth is not a quantity of dollars or wealth. Wealth is the ability to choose from a variety of options and the ability to take risks.
If you see someone on the street dressed like a middle-class person (say, in tidy jeans and a striped shirt), how do you know if he’s in the lower middle class or at the top of the middle class? In my opinion, the best indicator is how he behaves.
Recently, I’ve been able to rank myself at the bottom of the middle class. I was particularly aware of this when I had to deal with my backpack. My old laptop, which is already three years old, is in the backpack and can hardly hold a charger, so I carry a power bank with me. It also has paper and pens if I want to write or draw something, but that rarely happens. In addition, my backpack also contains a charger from my old phone, chewing gum, and sometimes food for a quick snack. If it’s summer, sunscreen and a bottle of water appear in my backpack. If it’s the cold season, raincoat and gloves. Sometimes I take a book with me so I don’t get bored.
If I were rich, I would carry my MacBook Air, iPad mini, and wallet. Go outside and take a closer look — I bet you’ll notice that rich people don’t carry much stuff with them.
The same applies to the lives of rich people in general: they don’t have much stuff at all.
When rich people say they’ve learned to live lightly, they often mention that wealth helped them live this way of life. That is, to come to this, you have to go through wealth.
If you buy food in bulk, you need a large refrigerator. If you can’t afford to have your car repaired in the cabin, you’ll have to carry a bunch of tools with you.
Being rich is a good way to rid your life of a lot of junk.”
In general, minimalism is the prerogative of wealthy people due to the fact that their wealth is a kind of safety cushion. If they get rid of something they might need in the future, they’ll just go to the store and buy it.
They shouldn’t have a lot of things with them, just a wallet is enough: if they need something, they’ll just buy it on the go. No problem. However, if you’re not that rich, you’ll have to carry a lot of stuff with you.
Minimalism still puts things at the center of your life
How ironic: on the one hand, the goal of minimalism is for you to stop paying a lot of attention to things, and on the other hand, minimalism continues to put things at the center of your life.
The materialist is focused on how to buy more things, while the minimalist is constantly thinking about how to get rid of these things. At the end of the day, they’re both focused on things.
This is well illustrated by the following example. There are two people: the first suffers from binge-eating and the other suffering from bulimia. The first one loves food and eats something all the time. The second one hates food and himself for eating, as a result of which the ritual of “cleansing” follows: a person vomits to get rid of food. The former loves food, the latter hates it, but they’re both obsessed with food.
First you are happy when you buy an item, and then you are happy when you get rid of it. It’s funny, isn’t it?
Moderate minimalism
As I mentioned at the beginning, I think minimalism is a great thing when it goes beyond extremes. People should have a healthy attitude towards their possessions: they should think about them, but they should not make it a goal of life.
Most of the great people I admire knew what they needed. They bought things for their practical use or simply because they enjoyed them. They bought high-quality items that do not require constant repairs and are sure to serve their owner for a long time. They did not accumulate unnecessary rubbish and did not surround themselves with a variety of garbage.
They didn’t make things the center of their lives; they could find much better goals to focus on.
They didn’t have time to worry about the fact that their library had too many books, that their workshop was cluttered with art supplies, or that one of the rooms had so many hunting trophies that they had a negative impact on their psyche.
But they were minimalists where they needed to: they didn’t waste their time doing useless things that could prevent them from creating the great things they left us with.
Source: https://lifehacker.ru/nichego-lishnego/
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