toward an essentialist lifetsyle

 

In mid 2015 I first encountered the idea of essentialism as a subscriber to Kinfolk Magazine. The June edition was called The Essentials Issue. I was immediately drawn to the practice; Deciding what is essential in our lives isn't about paring back our belongings and forgoing our beloved but unnecessary frivolities: Instead of determining how little we can live with, it's about working out what we cannot live without.

You can't can't explore the idea of Essentialism without coming across Greg McKeown's book which popularised the idea. Although the book, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, was framed to be applied to improve 'productivity', the ideas are generally applicable to all areas of life. When I reviewed it again last night, I was reminded that a commitment to an essentialist lifestyle is actually mainly about saying 'no'; about applying our limited resources and assets to the necessary things only.

We are on the precipice of another significant lifestyle change. That I have reached the pension-ripe age of 60 means we have some financial options that support a move to apply our essentiast aspirations to a few areas of life including my work, our home, travel and more generally our consuming patterns.

In parallel our skepticism about the trajectory of society is growing. It feels like, and the evidence suggests, that the institutions that have supported democratic capitalism are failing. This gives us greater resolve to disentangle; to lighten our investment in the things that we might have previously thought would insure us - provide some security as we age.

And so we ponder a step change in our decluttering. Of things. Of diary commitments. A more radical commitment to saying no to good things so we can be fully present and focussed on a few things. 

In 2009 we started our yurting lifestyle, the custom of spending multiple months a year in a caravan. That decision has got a lot to answer for. I write this sitting in our van and marvel at how we can live so happily with so little. When we return home to the relative cavernous space of our town house, we marvel at how we accumulate so much. And so we embark on a journey to swap our home, and in the process think carefully about what we take and more importantly what we don't, applying the principle of taking only those things we cannot live without.

It means saying no to tons of sentimental memorabilia. It means pairing back our collections of kitchen, recreation, technology and lifestyle equipment. Yikes. And fun.

It also means saying no to work that is not necessary. It means saying no to recreational pursuits that I would have sought to 'fit in' in the past. It means saying no to holiday travel. We'll learn so much about ourselves and how much we are able to align our decision-making with our espoused values.

Early in our yurting journey, here in Brunswick Heads we came across the Lucky Wonders. This post brings me back to a lyric of theirs that resonates even more deeply now:

I have lost interest in the world yoiu assume I want to make it in. Emotional, Thirteen O'Clock