I recently watched a show on Netflix called "Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things". It wasn't an action-packed movie with scintillating dialogue and lots of explosions, but I certainly appreciated it. One of the guys in the documentary mentions that he got rid of all of the stuff he didn't need, and he felt 10% happier. At the time I thought, "Why 10%? How can you quantify happiness?"
Nonetheless, I love the idea of minimalism. My husband thinks this means I want to throw away everything we own. (It doesn't mean that.) To me, it means not having too much or to little, but having
enough.
It means having the time to spend with family and friends instead of spending my time cleaning and maintaining my possessions.
It means choosing to spend an afternoon reading, playing, or crafting with my kids and not feeling like I have a million other chores I could (or should) be doing.
It means not over-scheduling myself and my children by having them participate in too many activities.
I means being able to think clearly and feel calm inside my head because my surroundings are uncluttered and organized.
It means focusing on what is essential, and letting go of all the rest.
In the documentary, they show a minute or so of footage of a speech given by President Jimmy Carter on July 15, 1979 called the "Crisis of Confidence" speech. He shares personal advice and criticism he received from people he had invited to Camp David. He speaks a lot about the energy crisis that America was facing at that time. At one point in the speech, he says this:
In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.
When I mentioned this to my parents, my dad said, "I think it was that speech that lost him the election in 1980." Maybe so, but I think his words ring fairly true for us in 2017.
I still have a lot of stuff, and I'm still going through it all. But I've made some serious inroads, and given away or thrown away things that I know I'll never use, read, or wear that just take up space and collect dust. Near the end of the program, this thought is shared:
Love people. Use things. The opposite never works.
So true. I think it gets easier to love people when I don't have so many things. My focus doesn't have to be on cleaning and maintaining stuff. And oddly enough, I feel happier. If I had to put a number on it, I would probably say 10% happier. 😉
