on minimalism
tiny thoughts on minimalism and messes.
I am Marie Condo’s worst nightmare. I have bits of broken jewelry on countertops to fix at an undetermined date, folders of high school science papers I swear I’ll learn from again, and miscellaneous wall decorations without cause or vision. When I started spending copious amounts of time with my belongings at the beginning of quarantine, I ravished through consumerism blogs to understand how to organize my things, and therefore organize my mind.
The purging and uncluttering of unnecessary physical objects is contemporarily known as “minimalism.” The “minimalists” say:
Minimalism is a tool to rid yourself of life’s excess in favor of focusing on what’s important—so you can find happiness, fulfillment, and freedom.
and
Minimalism is a tool that can assist you in finding freedom. Freedom from fear. Freedom from worry. Freedom from overwhelm. Freedom from guilt. Freedom from depression. Freedom from the trappings of the consumer culture we’ve built our lives around. Real freedom.
Freedom seems like the ultimate goal in a world bogging us down with more things, tasks, and information. How to get through it all? By getting rid of that which was inconvenient and unnecessary, I felt I could reach the state of freedom minimalists raved about. I created piles of papers to recycle, candles to light and finish, and clothing to sort and donate. Each day, I tousled hair products with my fingers and smothered lotions on my body to get rid of the duplicate products sitting on my counter. The purging of the old to move towards a perfect freedom from anything that could hold me back or bog me down was a thrill. After sorting through candles and pens, I sorted files, I sorted journals, and I sorted my thoughts through meditation. It was like a high and I always needed more. More happiness. More fulfillment. More freedom.
I kept letting go of my things, and none of my efforts felt like they were enough. The more I focused on the things I needed to get rid of, the more I felt shame over all that I had. The more I obsessed over finishing every list, the more I realized my failures in accomplishing all of my tasks I set out for the day. My focus was constantly on diminishing the presence of an obstacle or object that was standing in my way of getting to where I wanted to be.
One day, I finished a bottle of heat protectant while dressing my sister for prom. As I was about to throw it away, my sister asked, “Do you want to open this new one I bought, for whenever this one finished?” I was suddenly hit by all of the things that, like this bottle of product, appeared again in my life in Sisyphean ways: little trinkets that inevitably pile up, my consistent stream of emails, to-do lists, new books to read, drafts to write. These mundane tasks, these tiny objects, these journal pages holding my thoughts, wove together the details of my life. How could I suppress them? I could not free myself away from an infinite process, because my premise was wrong the entire time. What I was really looking for was freedom within a process that is infinite.
If I rid my room of nearly all my objects, then I will feel an inner peace. If I finish this project at work, then I will feel more productive and accomplished. If I cross off these tasks on my to-do lists, then I will feel more settled. This constant language of riddance had made me believe that difficulties and obstacles needed to disappear first before I reached a freer state, rather than finding freedom even in the midst of messes. How do you find peace in an infinite process? First, you accept it is infinite. Then, you try not to get rid of it, but work with it.
I looked on my desktop for a quote by Mark Manson that I often turn to, to ground me when perfection feels so elusive:
“Perfection is not some endpoint you achieve, but rather the process of improvement itself. No matter how much you improve yourself and your life, there will always be room for more growth and less suffering. There’s no final goal. The perfect self we all envision does not actually exist. As Gertrude Stein said, ‘There’s no there there.’ It never ends. What changes is your acceptance of your place in the process.
‘I suck at this, but that’s OK. As long as I’m working on it, it’s OK.’
Perfection is the process of improvement itself. Perfection is the innate drive for endless expansion, growth, and completion. We’re already there and we’ve always been there. We’re okay. We can be better. But we’re okay.”
The type of minimalism I originally embarked on was a process of complete and total riddance. By the end of it, I was a bit more organized and had fewer things, but also had the realization that there will always be more to work through. This is where the freedom lay, because it helped me understand that freedom is not a state to reach but a mindset to adopt by accepting the infinitude that lays ahead in anything worth working towards. Letting go of a fixed idea of perfection gave me more happiness. More fulfillment. More freedom. It took the onus off of my surroundings and shifted it towards my mindset. Once I was mentally free, the freedom within my physical surroundings automatically followed. I no longer wondered when I could clear out the messes of life so that I could be happy. I just chose to be happy within any mess.
Things I’m keeping an eye on (and you can too!):
Here is a statement that has shifted something inside of me and stuck with me since the moment I read it: Nikole Hannah-Jones Issues Statement on Decision to Decline Tenure Offer at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and to Accept Knight Chair Appointment at Howard University. To me, this letter is now a piece of literature for anyone interested in academia.
Always and forever a procrastinator who depends on time limits, this article made me see the limits of life in a macro way. It’s a hot take by the health expert, Ezekiel J. Emanuel, on life and death.
Community Center:
If there’s anything you’re reading, writing, feeling, eating, organizing, please share. I’d also love to collect your thoughts on how you’re transitioning to a nuanced “normalcy.” For any personal comments, feel free to reach out via Twitter, Instagram, or by email. Can’t wait to listen. Sending lots of love.