Category: Journal Entries

One morning, while I was in my car in my job parking lot, I look over at a women in the car next to me who is applying her mascara before she starts her work day. This got me thinking. Thinking about how fashion obsessed, how beauty obsessed we are as a culture. Some of us spend excessive amounts of time making ourselves look pretty before we leave the house. Often we justify it by telling ourselves (and others) “I do it for me, because I like the way I look when I do this,” but the truth is, we only feel that way because we long ago acquiesced to this idea of what beauty is “supposed to be” to the point where we actually believe that the standard we use is OUR OWN standard.

So we buy it; we buy this standard. We have followed this standard for so long that it is commonplace, it’s even expected. So expected that a “made up” face is the bare minimum requirement for many to be considered attractive. This means that many of us consider ourselves …… ugly otherwise.

In the end we do all these rituals for one reason and one reason only. To attract. I find this so fascinating. Fascinating because it seems so completely unnecessary. But we are compelled just the same. The primal urge to attract for the purpose of mating is so ingrained into us. No different than the Peacock spreading his feathers in a beautiful design to stimulate the female. It’s only enhanced over the years in taking up more time, money, and space toward the effort of attracting.

Of course, the power elite takes full advantage (exploits really) in supporting this (hell, they upped the anti this far), and between the middle class who believe they’re “ugly” and the power elite who claim to have the cure for “ugliness”, the cosmetic industry turned a profit of 62 billion in 2016.

To add insult to injury, the overwhelming majority of these beauty products are harmful to our health; particularly cosmetics. Many are just plain painful. Makeup pre-maturely ages our skin, High heels hurt our posture and cause back problems, and I don’t think I need to mention the risks of cosmetic surgery. The only things we should be applying to our face are gentle soap and water. That’s all.

The sooner we accept our natural beauty as the only real beauty, and reject the influence of the powers that be, the sooner we can get back to a life of function (not fashion) by not wasting any more time/money/space on this ridiculousness, and get to a life of real purpose, a minimalist life. We must pull the wool from our eyes.

 

The beauty of having a life of less clutter, a life of more time, is that we are able to get more use (and therefore more value) out of the things that remain. Without a bunch of clutter to store and maintain, and useless activity, we free up our space and time to take full advantage of our valued possessions and resources.

I find that this is a “perk” of being a minimalist. I discover more and more all the things I have access to that I did not and would not have discovered or been able to take advantage of, had I not been a minimalist.

 

 

 

Examples:

• Through Facebook, I can get real time news feed on all current events right on my phone through pages like Fox News and CNN. This more than compensates for the fact that I don’t have cable TV. I am still informed.
• I spend roughly $30/month on a gym membership that I have always used to do spin class during the off season (that I do not bike outside). Recently though, I have decided to get more value out of that membership by trying some other classes (Yoga, Body pump). It occurred to me that if I am already paying for membership, then I should be getting more value from that membership. I have had all this resource available to me, that has been squandered. Then it occurred to me that there are lots of people with gym memberships that take advantage of next to nothing ….. what a waste. For $30 a month, there is a lot of value to be packed in.
• Local Parks – Where I live there are many public parks, some of which are very beautiful, and quite large. These parks can be used for any recreational activity one would like to partake in. Fit and open for parties, BBQ’s, and sports. And most are immaculately maintained. They are well maintained because our tax dollars pay for them to be well maintained. Might as well use them, or that is more money squandered. Come to think of it …… with that being said, I still don’t understand why so many people obsess over having a large yard, a large piece of property. With access to wonderful park areas that we are paying for, why would one need to own a yard?
• On premises washer and drier – In my condo complex we have access to us laundry facilities, and what vexes me is the fact that people still insist on having their own washer/drier in their units instead of using the public ones. For starters, you have another possession to maintain. Second, it’s only a mater of a short period of time before these machines fail and need to be repaired. With the facilities machines this is less likely, as they are industrial quality. Third, one less thing taking up space.

It seems to me that humanities obsessive need to covet everything has clouded any drive toward making full use of the very things we covet. We figure that just by owning something, we must be getting full value out of it. If we truly look into and make full use of the things we own, we will be often surprised at how much we will discover that the things we coveted so much, we really don’t need; because those needs can be satisfied by the things we already own.