Category: Essays

There are 24 hours in a day. This may seem like a lot, but when we consider that 7-8 hours of that time is spent sleeping and 8 hours spent working, we are down to only a third left of our day to take care of everything else, like upkeep, our passions, and god forbid …. recreation. Often times there is not enough time and/or energy after work to handle all the upkeep, so we put off the upkeep to the weekend when we have plenty of time. Ah, but then that kinda makes the weekend a chore too, does it not. Now I could go on a rant about how a minimalist lifestyle can save us the tremendous amount of upkeep, thereby saving us a lot of time. But that is not what this essay is all about. THIS essay is about our obsessive need to follow a plan.

With all the necessary daily/weekly activities taking up so much of our time, it has become necessary for us to plan/schedule our recreational time and passions just to fit them in. Now there is nothing inherently wrong with that, but this has led to our obsession with trying to fill every blank space in our hourly calendar out of fear that we might fall behind in these activities and/or passions. Again, there is nothing wrong with planning out our activities; after all, a minimalist’s life is one of intention, and intention is usually planned and scheduled.

The problem with this is that when a persons schedule is so tightly packed with all the things they want to do, it cuts them off from growing wider mentally at the expense of growing deeper. That is, when someone packs their time to the brim with all the activities they need to do to pursue their passions, they are so focused on these pursuits that they don’t leave them-self open to consider other possibilities, other growth opportunities; potentially other passions. We become so narrowly focused on our goals, that any disruption that derails us from the path we have set for ourselves makes us furious. In our fury, we often close ourselves off from what the disruption is trying to teach us so that we can regain focus and get back on the track toward our destination. What we don’t realize, is that is potentially missed opportunity.

How do we fight this human tendency? simple. Don’t pack our schedules to tightly; allow plenty of buffer time for incidentals, because they can and will happen. Furthermore, don’t be so narrowly focused on these activities that we close our minds to other activities, other possibilities. I happen to believe that most of the time “incidentals” happen, they’re not incidental at all. They are in fact lessons and/or opportunities presenting themselves that we should be paying attention to. They are in fact, REAL LIFE unfolding right before us. If we fight it or try to avoid it, we are only robbing ourselves. Let life happen, and embrace it. Our current passions will still be there waiting for us when the lesson is over.

I have said countless times before that life is all about relationships and experiences. It is obvious that we cannot have many life experiences unless we are consistently having new experiences. It then follows that we cannot have new experiences unless we break the constant repetition of old experiences. In other words: We have got to break from our daily pattern of life often, and try new things (shake things up).

In my opinion, the biggest appeal to living a minimalist lifestyle has always been having the freedom to go to new places, and try new things. The truth is, new experiences are absolutely necessary to grow as people. One cannot acquire true wisdom with their nose in a book all the time, or even surfing the web constantly. Wisdom can only be gained from real world experience (which includes those things too) from a variety of sources, most of which require social interaction (which brings us to relationships).

Need more motivation? Consider this:

Think of your absolute favorite dish. The absolute most delicious thing you have ever tasted. Now consider how many dishes you have ever had in your life. NOW consider how many dishes exist in the world. I think we all can acquiesce to the fact that what we have been exposed to is just a mere fraction of the number of dishes that are out there. From that, we can infer that no matter what our favorite dish is, there must be one we would like even better out there in the world. Many in fact. I’ll even go far enough to say that it is likely we will never get to taste the dish that is the absolute best tasting one in our lifetime.

This logic can be applied to anything: favorite movie, favorite song, favorite sport, favorite vacation spot, favorite leisure activity, etc.

Is this not reason enough to grab life by the horns, and experience as much in life as possible.

A recurring idea that keeps on coming up in all of my posts is the idea of “value.” The very core concept of minimalism is to only retain only those things that add “value” to our lives. It was brought to my attention recently that some people may not know the difference between “value” and “cost”.

 

Something we “value”, is something we hold in high esteem with respect to usefulness, or importance, with regard to our own personal moral standing and passions.

Example: I value life, my daughter, and my bicycle. I value life because I am a servant of God (moral standing). I value my daughter because I am passionate about her. I value my bicycle because I am passionate about bicycling.

Those first two should be no-brainers for anyone to understand. The third one however (bicycle?), seems out-of-place here. While obviously I do not value my bicycle as much as life or my daughter, it is a possession of mine that I value very much. I mentioned it here to point out that “value” is very subjective, as most would not share my passion for bicycling. Value can not be quantified monetarily. And for those things we can put a “dollar value” on, we would usually do so just to use the proceeds to get a better version of that thing; such would be the case with my bicycle. So in essence we are placing a dollar value on it only as a means to replace it with something better toward serving the same purpose.

 

“Cost” is the monetary price of something.  Whether we are buying or selling it, cost is the agreed upon exchange rate. That’s it. That is the only real definition of cost. Often we use the word “value” instead of “cost” to represent the monetary cost of an item in the open market. Example: “This original Picasso painting is valued at $5,000.” This use of the word “value” is not defined the same as the “value” I mentioned above. This use of the word is just a fancy word for “cost.” A pretentious use of the word “value” to make it seem personal, un-materialistic, even subjective.

That Picasso may be worth $5,000, but I don’t value it any more than one of my four year old daughters “masterpieces” up on the fridge. But I’m not passionate about art. On the other hand, I am sure there is an art lover out there that would place a personal value on it well over $5,000 (if they had to put a number on it). True-value is subjective, and therefore far more important than cost-value because it’s part of what makes us individuals.

 

Too often do I see people treat cost-value as if it were true-value.

 

Example: I once knew a person (let’s call him Johnny) who did collect valuable pieces of art (paintings mostly). He claimed to be an art enthusiast. When I once visited his home, he took me to the basement where he kept all his pieces (He didn’t put them up on the walls of his home, mind you). All the pieces were wrapped and sealed in plastic so I couldn’t see them perfectly clearly. But he thumbed through them one by one giving me their names, and of course boasting about their “values”.

It is clear to see that Johnny is not an art enthusiast at all. The only true-value in art, is in the way it looks. How it pleases the eye. He can’t possibly be getting any true-value out of the pieces with them all wrapped up and stashed away in the basement. A true connoisseur would have the pieces up on the walls displayed for everyone to see. A connoisseur would frequently gaze upon them in contentment and contemplation. The truth is that Johnny is just an investor. An investor that just so happens use art as his medium for profit. Johnny is only fooling himself into thinking there is any passion behind his collection. This art collecting is an empty activity.

Generally speaking, any collection hobby where one puts their collection away to be untouched and unused for extended periods of time is not a passion at all. There is no true-value being added to ones life if the collection is unused.

With all this being said, I think it is clear now that understanding “value” (or true-value) is the real path to happiness. Having a good understanding of “cost” (or cost-value), may lead to a more financially sound life, but will not gain one happiness.