The less I have, the more I live

I don’t want to own anything except what is essential.

We live in a society that loves hoarding. No matter how big our home is, it ends up filled with stuff.

My father calls that the theory of perfect gases.

A gas ends up filling up all the volume it’s confined to.

I’ve never hoarded anything, never felt any social pressure to accumulate stuff.

That’s why I owned my first car for 13 years. It was the smallest, cheapest 2nd hand car I could find. I drove it until it exploded.

That’s why I’ve lived 12 years in the same small apartment.

– My ’94 Geo Metro hours before being recycled into scrap metal after 13 years of service –

Every dollar I can save on non-essential stuff is a dollar more I can invest in people, things, and experiences that do matter.

The less I have, the more I live.

This is not new. It’s known as living a minimalistic life. I like to call it minimalistic essentialism.

That’s a mouthful and there should be a more minimalistic way of expressing that concept. Maybe “minism”, or “nism”, “sm”…

Still too long – how about a simple dot like this “·” ?

So there you go – I live a · life.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to own things, but only things that matter to me.
Things that can improve my quality of life without bogging me down.

I love to have a roof over my head, I love my 55″ flat screen TV, my bed and my iPad, my Macbook Pro (and my wife of course but I don’t own her 😉 )

Because I didn’t squander my resources on superfluous stuff I have no problem spending money on what matters to me.

If there is something I don’t want to ever ever own it’s debt.

The average U.S. household with debt carries $15,762 in credit card debt and $130,922 in total debt.

I’ve never had debt in my life because I’ve never spent what I didn’t have.

This minimalistic-essentialism can be taken to the extreme, and some people do.
People that sell all their possessions so they can fit their entire life in a suitcase.

I don’t want to get there. It’s about finding a balance. About learning what really matters and what doesn’t. You need to create your own filter and decide what is essential and what isn’t.

Once you do you must be ruthless and systematically eliminate anything that doesn’t pass your “is this essential?” filter.

When you do this it feels great. I really feels like a weight is being lifted off your shoulders. You feel leaner. Getting rid of stuff has a wonderful psychological cleansing effect.

This cleansing can also be applied to relationships, people, activities, thought processes, even our cluttered computer desktop!

You see, everything we own, be it physical, mental, emotional, or digital takes time to deal with, so the more non-essential stuff we eliminate the more time we can allocate back to the things that really matter.

The more you focus on the essential, the more you’ll live.

Do you see value in practicing minimalistic-essentialism?

Let me know and until then…

Peace, Love and · cookies,

Miguel

P.S. if the dot is too small for you you can use “B7” which is the hexadecimal equivalent of that dot in ASCII. So instead of minimalistic-essentialism you can say B7. Hey you! I live a B7 live.. haha!

P.2: A good book on Essentialism is well… a book called “Essentialism” by Greg McKeown.