I'm a Failure of a Minimalist
Look at this:
I finished packing, tripling the amount of boxes seen in this picture. What happened??
I used to live out of a suitcase. I use to live out of four small bags strapped to my bike. Before that I took pride in being able to toss my things into a couple of boxes then move into a new house the same-day. I'm kicking myself hard right now because it took me a week to pack up for my move into a smaller, nicer apartment. A mountain of cardboard looms in front of me, and I don't know what I'm going to do about it.
Milly and I spent all of last month traveling Thailand and Japan with nothing more than our backpacks. Armed with some clothes, my phone, and a sketch-pad, I wanted for so little! Constraints like "Everything I own must only fit into such-and-such a space", I believe, is a good way to approach minimalism. To my chagrin this year, I've neglected my own principles. In fact, my "such-and-such a space" became the entirety of a house with two rooms we didn't use; we only planned to live in it for one year.
Belongings as a Reflection of my Frustration
Today I realized that I take my frustration out on my wallet. A lot. And this has been one of the most emotionally difficult years of my life. Its come as the Yin to my Yang in both a traditional sense and the "light and darkness" sense which westerners have (somewhat erroneously) applied to the concept. All my big plans this year fell through: Start a family, settle in, not travel, up-skill at my job, save X dollars... Maybe my expectations were too high. Milly and traveled a continent by tent and bicycle the whole year prior. After washing myself with a wet cloth and learning how to stealth-poop inside our tent for such a long time, I figured the return to civilian life was going to be a piece of cake, piece of crumb cake even.
It was not
The reasons are many, and I'll write about them (the loss of my daughter, father, grandfather, and a fish) in a different post. Instead, I'm reflecting on what my grief and plenty has taught me as my ADD-hobby-spirals took the wheel of my life. Most of my problems, it turns out, boil down to meditation and distraction (a lack of the prior, and an abundance of the latter).
A Life With Limits is a Life With Focus
Seeing a physical cardboard burden rise before my eyes has lead me to reflect on how my life changed in the last two to five years. I realized that the happier I was, the fewer things I held onto. Before I started dating my wife, I was a text-book minimalist (but I wouldn't call myself that). I had a few sets of clothes I liked, a few cooking utensils, and a life style that could be summarized as "meditation with life sprinkled in between." My most expensive possession was my little laptop, and when I wasn't in meditation I was drawing or writing. I loved meditating with people and truly being present with them. Being in the present was really where life was at! I noticed that these last few years, I've been evasive, and I've come to miss enjoying the company of others.
Life on the road is my Living Meditation version of this life style. I swap my cushion for my boots or saddle and make each step count. Knowing I have to carry everything and stay in a budget makes me conscious of my spending habits. I was incredibly aware of this in Japan. Did you know that Japan is just one big gift shop? Every little gift or item we bought was another thing on our backs for the next 2 - 3 weeks. On my bike, when I lived along the length of the Andes, each little gift was another thing I'd need to haul up a mountain. I carried a Peruvian coffee-pot and a Bolivian llama-wool poncho for about 10,000km+ over twenty mountains and lemme tell you, I felt every gram of it! There is such joy in being a living moving part of the environment, and because I typically never haul electronics other than my phone (which often doesn't get web access), I become engrossed in the things I love like writing and drawing. I'm still beaming over how cool my travel journal turned out in Japan / Thailand last month! These big trips end with a huge sense of satisfaction as my skills and perspectives are brought to new heights. I love the feeling of how putting energy into creativity brings freshness and life into my brain! I could live a life of just wandering, drawing, and writing if someone paid me to do it, but not for it.
What's Changed? My Happiness.
In my first draft of this post, I wrote a big chunk of text to blame my tendencies on media-distractions, on unlimited internet access, on video games, etc. I compared item by item what I have now vs. what I had during my phase of extreme minimalism. Then it hit me (3,000 words in) that I didn't look at the root of my problem and ask myself "What am I currently filling up my life with, and what does it mean?"
Often times the meaning was fear. Often times the meaning was frustration. At the end of our South-America trip, I built a big, expensive, obnoxious, gaming computer which has been collecting dust in a closet. It's come to represent "The First Sin" to me, as it was the first thing I put my money and energy into when we got off our bikes. Looking back on the moment and motivations leading me to build such a thing, it became clear that it was motivated by fear.
Before the end of our trip that year I realized that I'd be settling down with my wife, starting a family, and devoting all of my life force to bringing another soul into this chaotic world. I told myself "When I get home, I'm going to build this computer and use it for those eight months while my wife is pregnant. Really crank out the game miles!" Which made no sense at all because the only gaming-items I owned prior was a Miyoo Mini I bought for the bike trip, and a 3DS-XL I bought new in college so I could trade Pokemon with a friend. I went way out of my way to make it too. In the last few weeks of my trip, When we were flying to the US to see family, I spent every night-time moment on wifi getting it perfect. I even bought the case in the states and hauled it all the way back to China in my bike pannier!
So why build this thing? Fear. Fear of entering a new phase of life. Fear that if I didn't get in these last few months of button-mashing, I'd never scratch that itch again until I was an older man. After my daughter passed away, I collected a lot of gaming items, and spent a lot of time tweaking them to perfection. Why? Frustration - it was a good distraction from the hardships of life.
And this mindset of trying to create perfection and control in an otherwise chaotic time spread into nearly avenue of my thinking. The irrationality is almost baffling to me when written out: "You don't see people as often because you stopped doing gongfu-tea ceremony. Time to make that perfect tea set!" "Why is there never enough time to do things I love? Folding laundry is the culprit! Lets buy coat-hangers for each article of clothing I own!" "Milly has been complaining that all I ever cook is Indian food. Maybe if I redo my whole kitchen to do French food instead, she will be happy again!"
Purchasing to me is like slapping on a band-aid to cure a cold.
The current state of my kitchen is the second largest sign of my ills. Packed up, it takes up a quarter of my space. Before this year, I took a lot of pride in my cooking. As a cook, I thrive with simplicity and seasonality. My kitchen used to fit in one or two small boxes - a single bag on a long journey. When Milly was pregnant, she stopped wanting to eat a lot of things I'd cook. Then I would feel wounded and buy new equipment, new ingredients, try new recipes... and my ratios for her satisfaction became abysmal - the kitchen became a place of fear and frustration. Food cooked by insecurity will never satisfy, food fueled by mindfulness and love will never be bland. When Milly, who cannot stand to throw things away, packed up the spices, we had a hefty bag full of expired powders I never gotten around to opening. "Oh, French food is out, well, time to make this a Japanese kitchen!" It sounds so stupid but that was my actual real-life thought process. I ended up throwing away a lot of ingredients when she wasn't looking.
Why am I Hauling Junk to my New Home? What Will I Do With it All?
Writing and editing this entry gave me clarity: the more scared or unsatisfied I am with life, the more I pile on possessions and distractions. My English Degree is finally paying for all the therapy I can't afford. So why didn't I just throw it all away instead of packing it? In the past when I was single, that's exactly what I would do. I'd set a container limit, sort the items that brought me joy, and then throw away/donate/give-away the rest.
My Wife Says I Have Big Gaps Between My Fingers Because I'm Bad With Money:
My wife is my opposite. She typically never buys much. The few things she owns are useful and get used for a long time. She'd rather fix something than throw it out, and she gets her clothes second-hand from friends. When she no longer needs something, she'll go out of her way to sell it rather than throw it away.
This strategy served her very well, and continued to for the first three-ish years of our relationship. The caveat is that she can't stand to see me throw things away! She admires my ability to let go of possessions but she hates to see the money I spend get tossed in the trash. This originally once made me very conscious of purchases because every time I try to let go of something, she won't let me. Discarding stresses her out because she feels the need to put it online, sell it, then send it out. Each item can take days, weeks, or months to get rid of. I've started seeing my purchases as things that hurt me, and hurt her in turn. I can't stand to bring her pain.
One partner buys too much, The other partner buys nothing but discards little, Garbage Mountain, Garbage Sea.
We haul our boxes to the new home tomorrow. I want to make notes of what we need, and start selling or discarding unneeded things one at a time. It's important that I severely limit my buying at this time and focus on my things first, not the things we own jointly. Before tossing something in the trash, I'll give it the Mari Kondo treatment and ask "Is it worth selling? Is there someone who will actually want this? Or has it served its purpose?"
My goal is to reduce my belongings in half by the end of the year. Realistically this means whittling down my possessions to a quarter of what they are now, and acquire new things mindfully as a join decision. I'll write updates on that part of my journey from time to time.
Until then,
With loving kindness, Daruma