Look, I'll be honest, I always thought minimalism was just a trend that inner-city hipster folks did to see who could out-wanker themselves.
Hipster 1: Whoa man, you're like, living inside a milk crate...it's both low impact and high impact at the same time. amazeballs. And that second-hand retro beanie you're wearing is so you....
Hipster 2: Ummm, dude, that's Gary the homeless guy on Cooper St you're talking to....
But then I dug a little deeper. There's something in this. And it's quite wonderful.
Treasuring what you’ve got.
An interesting conversation I had a number of years ago really stuck with me. You know those convos right? That chat that seems light, cruisy and seemingly innocuous, yet for some reason it takes root in your brain —and over the coming days, weeks, and years you keep revisiting it over and over and over….
We were catching up with some mates at Palm Beach on the Gold Coast enjoying a couple of craft beers —as you do— and the wonderful Nik Hatherly was telling us about her decision to be more conscious about the sheer number of items in her life, and as a consequence undertook an exercise in minimalism. In effect, she wanted more of her material items to have purpose and meaning.
One strategy she employed as part of this was embracing the joy of one.
Could she reduce her material possessions down to singular items? One coat? One bag? Hmmm, what an interesting experiment, she thought. So, the place she started was a pen. Yep. A pen.
She got rid of all her pens (hundreds of them) and committed to having one pen. Her pen.
As a result, something remarkable has happened for her. She’s more committed to that pen, valuing it as much as her phone or purse. C’mon, we all have the same routine as we leave the house, don’t we?
Hmmm…got my wallet, check. Phone, check. Keys…now where did I put those damn keys?….
Well now Nik had added one…her pen. After all, it was the only one she now owned.
Curiously she’s also developed a more meaningful relationship with her pen. Not in a weird way where she’ll appear on the front of a tabloid magazine with a headline screaming“Woman Marries Pen! says she finally found the write one”
Nothing that extreme, but Nik has cultivated a more valuable relationship with a material object. How the heck does someone value a pen that much? you may ask…Consider this. Nik now knows that her pen has accompanied her as a partner to sign off on major events, been a part of her triumphs and tribulations, and has seen and been part of her best and worst. It’s helped her do her work, to write letters and cards to people expressing gratitude…when you think about it, that pen has played a huge role in her life. It now means something much more than its material value. And there’s something in that.
Combatting a throw-away life (and relationships)
So, it got me to thinking: how often do we view things as disposable?
Do we take time to give enough thought to our meaning and attachment to material things?
My train of thought took me to deeper, and sadly, darker thoughts. Do we turn up to work looking at the experience of work as disposable also?
If I don’t like it, bugger it, I’ll just find another place to work…
Do we view the people we work with as disposable?
If I don’t like them, screw ‘em, I’ll just find other people to hang with…
Do we look at our strategies and see them as disposable?
If I don’t like it, who cares? I’ll just wait and there’ll be another one in the next 12 months…
What if we were to view our work and the people with through the filter of the joy of one?
Perhaps if we were to treat things with a greater level of permanency and deeper level of respect it’d change our experience for the better, wouldn’t it? We would take more care with them for starters. If this job I was working in; if this team I was a part of; if this product I was responsible for — what if they were all I ever had?
But rather than wring our hands and go ‘woe is me’ : what if we were to replace that inner dialogue with gratitude?
Imagine that there were no alternative options; that your experience is to find meaning with what I currently have rather than what I don’t.
That’s the conversation that has been running around in my head since 2017. I don't revisit it nearly enough, but every time I do, I see the world (and my place in it) in a much better light.
And it’s a good conversation to have as we hurtle headlong into 2023.