Minimalism is about more than physical items; it’s the solitude of choices
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. (Henry David Thoreau)
So minimalism is a thing. I came by it a couple of years ago, was intrigued by the accordingly named documentary on Netflix and immediately got hooked by the stories of Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus. I felt the same pain, was at some point in a comparable dilemma. And I thought, well, I can do that lifestyle as well. Seems legitimate and healthy?
The thought of not needing things did not scare me at all. I always had a very loose relationship with the things that surround me. A habit I got accustomed to throughout my life. Before my wife and I purchased a house years, as you ought to do when you grow up. I realized on that foggy, and cold February morning, that will be my thirteenth time that I moved. It never, over the years, occurred to me that it had been this much. I was moving within cities and was moving away from where I was born and bred, went off to University. I got back to my hometown. Changed apartments within that city. Moved in with my back then-girlfriend. I moved to a different city to work. Moved to a nearby city with my now wife. Then bought a house where I am sitting in now writing this. It just happened. And while I was moving I was always too lazy to carry all the stuff that I aggregated in that time frame to bring it with me to the next stop. I was good at throwing things away, as I thought that I wouldn’t need them anymore. I haven’t been very clingy to things and memories. Sure, I lost a lot of memorabilia over that time — childhood memories as well as the sacraments of coming of age. A grew estranged of things that represented my past. My past is nothing for many reasons I put on a pedestal. Nothing I am sad for, to be honest.
I have that very uncaring relationship with my past.
The notion of keeping something alive that had already left this moment when it endured escapes me. I am sure that there is some revolting truth in that, but I don’t even mind that. It is just things manifesting a memory in the physical world, as scars do, but we would like not to keep them on our bodies if we would have the choice. So yes, every moving meant keeping the necessities. Minimalism should not be a big of a deal to me, at least not staying away from mindless accumulating physical objects.
We are like many pellets of incense falling on the same altar. Some collapse sooner, others later, but it makes no difference. (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.15)
But after every move to a new place to live I started to get things again. New items, things I already had, and suddenly felt to have them again. Over the years, I have to admit; I owned some copies of books three times in various formats, hardcover, paperback, and digital. I even thought that a digital library of over a thousand books in my kindle account bares the logic of minimalism. I thought minimalism is a way of radically removing things that take up physical space. But limiting this idea to such gravitational meanings is a halfhearted excuse to throw stuff away. I was excellent and compelling in the argument with my wife before moving into our house that we wouldn’t need CDs anymore or a dozen of boxes with mixtapes, DVDs, and Blu-rays. I was quick to explain that in that oh so digitized world, we would not need those things anymore. We got everything tucked away within ones and zeroes that do not clutter or shelves and closets. And I meant it, and it was a struggle to go through that process while packing up to leave. And I like it minimalistic. I love my desk as empty as it can be. Free space leaves me room to think and work. I can’t stand the sight of a cluttered kitchen counter and coffee table.
But after every move to a new place to live I started to get things again. New items, things I already had, and suddenly felt to have them again. Over the years, I have to admit; I owned some copies of books three times in various formats, hardcover, paperback, and digital. I even thought that a digital library of over a thousand books in my kindle account bares the logic of minimalism. I thought minimalism is a way of radically removing things that take up physical space. But limiting this idea to such gravitational meanings is a halfhearted excuse to throw stuff away. I was excellent and compelling in the argument with my wife before moving into our house that we wouldn’t need CDs anymore or a dozen boxes with mixtapes, DVDs, and Blu-rays. I was quick to explain that in that oh so digitized world, we would not need those things anymore. We got everything tucked away within ones and zeroes that do not clutter or shelves and closets. And I meant it, and it was a struggle to go through that process while packing up to leave. And I like it minimalistic. I love my desk as empty as it can be.
Free space leaves me room to think and work.
I can’t stand the sight of a cluttered kitchen counter and coffee table.
But as before, this collided with my urge to learn new things accompanied with the need to be only ready to learn when I got all the tools that one could ever possess to master a craft. I always wanted to learn the guitar. I have now three of them along with three amps, cables, books on how to learn the guitar. I always wanted to learn to draw, got dozens of books on digital art, pens and papers, digital drawing tablets. I always want to write, trying to find methods that would spring an uninterrupted flow of creativity, not hindered by digital distractions. I got every software that was deemed to be the one that surely would almost finish your novel by itself. I got Scrivener, left it frustrated when I was not able to get a well-designed output for a book that was far from finished. I did only halfheartedly stick with Ulysses while its limited ways to compile a text wasn’t suiting my wishes. I reverted to Word because everyone does eventually.
It was a good idea to get a typewriter, nothing you can do with it but write. Unblock me of the thought of how it would look in the end. I wrote a lot after that. It wasn’t a good idea to get eight of that typing machines over a year. Being a typewriter collector was a legitimate but poor excuse. I got a fountain pen to master the craft of longhand writing. Neil Gaiman went back to writing his exemplary art with a pen in a notebook. Maybe this would fuel the force in me fighting off the lingering procrastinator in my head, holding back the last pages on so many unfinished novels and short stories. Just in case, so this deliverance will surely come, I own six fountain pens in various qualities now — nine different flasks of inks beside my desk. I wanted to produce music, had the idea of epic orchestral sounds at my fingertips. I bought the software, Midi-Controller (three sitting somewhere in the corny of my office), hundreds of Euros spent on digitally sampled instruments. At least they did not take up a lot of space.
I felt the urge to run a 10K, and I didn’t care what time it would take to get there or complete it at a certain pace, I love the idea of running. I made it to a solid 7K but never the full round, although I own a stack of running clothes tailored to the needs of all four seasons. As usually, with habits, life gets in the way, at least I told myself this omni-exercisable lie. After a half year running hiatus, I am struggling now with 5K in the currently very crisp mornings. At least my extensive collection of running gear keeps me suitable warm.
Unfortunately, I was fortunate enough to not care about the money. It dawned to me way too late that I earned more money than I could reasonably spend. I spend it anyways. I was pathologically confident that I could only master a craft, was it writing, drawing, or music, if I got all the tools every professional would house in hers or his creational cave. So far, neither the Pro’s software nor the typewriter gave me the endurance of a published novel. Neither the Fender Tele nor the Ibanez with a luxurious looking walnut finish and gritty sounding Les Paul made me master any of the classical riffs on my *Awesome Guitar* playlist.
The ephemeral texture of everything digital.
At some point, I got even fundamentally scared of the ephemeral texture of everything digital. I broke out in sweat, pondering about how all the thousand books on my Kindle could disappear any second with the flicking of a switch. The big and very real circuit breaker hidden away somewhere elusively remote with one single purpose to shut off all the cloud storage in the world. Who knows? The absent palpability of streamed music freaked me out. I own a record player now, and dozens of vinyls I started to digitize so they can not be taken away but are available to me any time anywhere.
To phrase it with the words with the „Master of not giving a fuck“ Mark Manson, I was caught in the Feedback Loop from Hell:
The world is constantly telling you that the path to a better life is more, more, more — buy more, own more, make more, fuck more, be more. (Mark Manson — The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck)
I always thought I was digitally bulletproof. All the talk about Social Media addiction was strange to me. I could easily switch off the idea in my head that I needed quick likes on Facebook and hearts on Instagram to define my self-worth. I did tune completely down on posting the sallow usualness of my existence into the world long ago. I read Cal Newport’s „Digital Minimalism“somewhat out of curiosity than out of seeking help to cope with today’s overwhelmingness. I found the argument Cal Newport is making interesting at least, fascinating at most but nothing more. Though something as palpable as *the cloud* made me coming back to that book again and again. Somehow I knew that there was something beyond the written lines and the killing of the digital distractions of smartphone epidemics.
And in the forty-two pages of Newport’s argument for the imperative of solitude, it finally clicked. Minimalism is not about not having stuff around you or carefully curating new acquisitions. It is solitude. Although the argued isolation wants to deliberately wean us from the omnipresent zests of the digital everything, I gazed beyond that apparentness. For my troubled existence, pure minimalism is the solitude of choices.
Racing against the hourglass
With the culturally imposed crisis of moving towards the 40-years of age, I was wired of accomplishing everything I wanted and needed. I started racing against the *grim reapers hourglass* that even the black-hooded scythe-bearing guy didn’t even pay attention to. For some unknown reason, I was wound up in being wired constantly to get it all now. And that was it what was driving me past the speed limits of life getting dangerously close to the guard railing with every curve the highway took. There are enough dings and scratches in the finish to prove that uncomfortable truth.
Simply put, humans are not wired to be constantly wired. (Cal Newport — Digital Minimalism)
The much simpler truth, though, might be, I got time to do everything one by one and not at once. I tend to move past the 90 candles on the birthday cake; therefore, 40 is way to early to let J. Lo and Shakira fire off the halftime show of my existential Super Bowl. I will ignore the rush and the crisis of the age that I most definitely should not be feeling. That is the essential fact of life my inner Thoreau went to the woods to find and not the fear of missing out on something that would lead to the discovery „that I had not lived. “ I want to plunge myself into the bliss of ignorance.
Ignorance is truly bliss sometimes. (Cal Newport — Digital Minimalism)
Ignoring the countdown on the game clock that could or could not start any second. I am minimalizing the desires of what I want a future me to be. And I am purposely limiting the choices of how to get there and the fears of what will get me off the tracks. That will be my creed from now on.
Limit thy choices, limit thy fears.
If I want to write, my desk can be empty as a single stack of blank printer paper next to an ordinary pencil. Although the ordinarily will extend to a Blackwing 602, because I can. If digitally, anything more than a blank Word document is simply a burden of variety and soiling the solitude. I am depriving myself of an abundance of choices. For me, the real imperative of solitude for minimalism is not only getting rid of things of refraining from getting new stuff. It is ignoring anything else beyond the problems I want to solve now. The problem of writing is a problem I will solve now, and only that. I choose to put everything else off for later because I ignore an imposed fear of an end that most certainly is for far away to make a concern now.
True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving. (Mark Manson — The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck)
My truly believed minimalism is the solitude of choices I impose happily on myself from now on. And I season it with some grains of stoicism.
In short, you must remember this — that if you hold anything dear outside of your own reasoned choice, you will have destroyed your capacity for choice. (Epictetus, Discourses, 4.4.23)
