Keep It Simple
Imagine you woke up to two incredibly loud beeping sounds: your smoke detectors going off. You can smell the fumes rising up and filling your entire house. Your home is about to be engulfed in flames. When your body's adrenaline kicks in, do you remember to grab any of the stuff you've been accumulating over the years? The new PlayStation you swore you couldn't live without? The heap of clothes in your wardrobe that you've said you might need to wear again someday? We hoarded so much stuff and convinced ourselves that we need it all. But when our eyes glow red and the fire truck blares the sirens in the distance, none of that seems to matter.
Why then do we cling on to these things so much? A few days have now passed, and you meet with your insurance agent. They help you determine the value of what was lost, and some money is eventually deposited in your bank account. You go through the list of items to replace, and you realize you have another choice to make: three—buy all the stuff you lost to the flames—or take another path, one of intentionality that has the power to bring you more peace than any of those materialistic items could ever bring you. You have the power to embrace minimalism—the pursuit of less.
We live in a society that pushes the idea that more is always better. Throughout the old, bringing the new, and more of it, we consume twice as many material goods today as we did 50 years ago. There's no bigger testament to this than the amount we spend on storage space. Around 38% of Americans would rather pay an average of $190 per month to keep their excess stuff frozen in time, locked up in a room, than to just let those things go. That's in addition to the $1,497 spent on non-essential items every single month. Even at a time when money isn't that easy to come by, why do so many of us buy into this unhealthy way of living?
Why do we consume so much stuff that we can't fit it all in our homes? Well, there are two main reasons: status and short-term happiness. Even before advertisements were inescapable, humans acquired more things as a way to display our superior status to others. From kings of old demonstrating their wealth with oversized castles, fanciful dress wear, and pristine furniture, to more recently, people buying luxury cars and the latest iPhone, humans have always associated owning more with having a higher societal status. And for a very social species, you can see why the status would be so important to us.
Even worse, many of us have also bought into the idea that buying things can make us happy. When we buy more stuff, thinking that the next purchase will finally satisfy us—and for a moment it does—that dopamine hit that comes from anticipating your delivery is real, but temporal. It is one that floats away once whatever we have stops being new and shiny. Thankfully, we're not doomed to this mode of living. We're free to seek happiness and fulfillment in other, more precious things.
When that fire starts in the middle of the night, the only things that concern us are our health, happiness, freedom, and loved ones. Those are the things that matter most in life, and minimalism helps us get rid of all the distractions so we can truly focus on these things. Although only recently adopted into the mainstream, the philosophy of minimalism has been around for thousands of years. Greek philosopher Diogenes famously rejected material wealth to such an extent that he lived in a barrel, ate with his hands, and spent his days criticizing Athenians for living insincere lives focused on delusions such as wealth and status.
Living in roughly the same time period, worlds apart, the Buddha too rejected material cravings as he insisted, in his teachings of the second noble truth, that our craving is what gives rise to dukkha or suffering. We desire pleasure and often pursue it in the form of material goods. We search for more stuff and become attached to it when we possess it. The object itself doesn't lead to suffering, but our thirst and attachment to those objects cause us pain. If philosophical rejections of materialism have been around for a very long time, why has minimalism...