Minimalist Thoughts

A few days ago, someone asked me about minimalism. I had done a few local podcasts with a friend about minimalism and as a consequence I am sometimes viewed as a “minimalist.” Hopefully this website URL nixes that idea.

That said, this person asked me if I thought folding phones would be good for minimalism. “After all,” he said, “they take up less space.”

This very question underscores a deep flaw in a lot of minimalists: that ironically, they are still obsessed with things. The obsession with possessions has just switched to a preference for things with a “minimalist aesthetic.” The inner materialist is not destroyed, but rather transferred to new yearnings. Thoughts are still dominated by acquisition, but isn’t the purpose of minimalism supposed to be free oneself of consumerism?

I replied that if you want a phone that helps you to not give a damn about “things,” your best bet would be to have a phone that you don’t give a damn about. Get a cheap Motorola (if you actually need a new phone) or something that that is so low on the status totem pole, it’s unlikely to encompass any amount of time or thought at all. Don’t get a thousand dollar “folding phone.” After all, the whole idea of “minimalism” is to not place one’s focus on material possessions. I don’t think Seneca or any stoic would care about how big or small his phone was. Seeking more compact models that take up less space has the same end result as seeking iPhone upgrades: you’re still constantly looking for the next best thing.

This flaw in minimalism can also be seen in the pursuit of clothes. I know minimalists who are constantly seeking “more minimalist pants.” In most cases these are pants that serve multiple functions: pants you can bike, hike, travel, or go to the office in. They are pricier and tend to be made of more premium materials. And therein lies the issue: the pursuit of minimalist pants is a materialist pursuit. Whatever space you save in “wardrobe space” is negated by the time you lose thinking about pants.

If one was really seeking minimalist clothes, I think a more effective approach would be to shop for basic and affordable things and then forget about “how many things are in a wardrobe.” The whole idea is to not think about your wardrobe at all.

Live with imperfection. That’s the only way to really free yourself of consumerism.

I state this to emphasize the obvious: there is a maximalist lurking inside most minimalists.

The Last Day

My last day spent as a 36-year-old was a stark contrast from my last day as a 35-year-old.

I spent my last week at age 35 bedridden due to a bicycle injury that prevented me from running for the remainder of 2021. On my last day at age 35, I dreamt of running, but struggled to leave my apartment.

In contrast, I spent my last week at age 36 running longer distances than I ever had in my life. With each run my right foot feels better, not worse. I often imagine myself running like a Kenyan, gliding over the Iten hills and along the top edges of the terrain’s escarpments. In my dream I possess the seemingly effortless fluidity of a Kenyan athlete. I snap from this vision and reality reminds me that I don’t have their running ability, but then again, arguably no one else does either.

Because I ran throughout my last week at age 36, I slept for as long as possible through my last day at age 36. I ate donuts and drank a brown sugar shaken espresso from Starbucks. In short, I indulged, and I don’t regret it in the slightest. I hadn’t indulged in awhile. I might as well be gluttonous on the last day.

I visited a doctor for a final evaluation of an elbow injury that I suffered from a bike crash about a month ago. The X-rays were negative. The elbow sprained, but it did not tear. No surgery is needed. Time will heal the elbow. It might be weeks, and it might be months, but it’ll heal. That news was a very nice birthday present.

I continue to heal the pinched nerves in both of my hands, remnants of overuse during a bike packing trip I embarked on two weeks ago. I’m still reflecting on that trip and will post more about it.

I think of these injuries and realize that even when I’m healing my foot, I seem to be injuring other body parts.

I am about to finish repairing my gravel bike. In that aforementioned crash last month, the bike’s front wheel bent and its derailleur, cassette, and hanger broke. Yet somehow I didn’t break. The doctor I visited told me I have strong bones. I think that’s true, but these crashes also add up over time. I don’t know if I have another crash in me.

“How are you feeling?” The bike shop manager asked me when I took my damaged bike in for a repair. He noted my scrapes, bruises, and swollen elbow. It was a question I don’t often get from anyone besides my immediate loved ones.

We always ask, “How are you doing?” This beckons the default answer, “Good.” I was surprised that someone would ask how I’m feeling.

“I guess I’m good today,” I said.

“I mean, how are you feeling mentally, after the crash? Are you okay? Because after my last crash, I was never the same again. I wasn’t the same cyclist.”

I was touched that someone cared to ask that. It had been awhile since a relative stranger showed care for my wellbeing. I absorbed it for a moment. Was I really okay? Am I?

“I think it might be time for me to only bike on trails and greenways,” I said. I took a deep breath. There was a sense of finality in my words.

“I reached the same conclusion after my last crash,” he replied. “I hope you feel better though and keep cycling.”

“I’ll definitely keep cycling,” I said. “Maybe not on roads though.”

I left the shop and looked out at the clusters of brick and mortar buildings, the gaunt sky, and the constantly flowing currents of traffic that carried with them the acrid scent of car exhaust.

36 is over. There’s no getting it back. I was flawed for that period of time and I’m flawed now, but hopefully I learned a few things through the passage of time. It was quite a journey.

I’m on to 37. I’ll wake up and go for a run. Mentally, I won’t be running through a concrete cluster before work. I’ll be in Kenya, gliding through a valley, or along an escarpment, as the sun crests over the horizon. Away from the screens and keyboard warriors of the sedentary west, and away from the common materialistic ambitions and plastic goals that inundate the office.

Miles from me, a lion will stalk its prey. I will steadily accelerate my pace; the village has long-been out of sight.

Minimalist Chronicles: Part 1 - Detaching from Things

I began my massive declutter in August, shortly before my 36th birthday. There was no single particular impetus for change. I just looked around my residence and perused my belongings and concluded that almost none of them were purchased out of necessity. Practically all of them were purchased from a variety of external factors:

• The fear of missing out (“athleisure” is the newest trend, don’t mind out on what everyone else is wearing!)

• Vanity/the need to impress (buy a car and show the world you’re worth something)

• The fear of being incomplete (marketing tools used to tell you that your life will be worse without it and you’re just one purchase away from being complete)

Shortly before I began my declutter, I imagined my death. That’s a dark thing to imagine. I imagined it nonetheless and thought of what I was leaving behind. What did I see in this vision? Material things, acquisitions, and a mess of stuff for friends and family and loved ones to sort through. But what are the things, compared to the person? What is stuff compared to memory? I had read Everything That Remains by the Minimalists before, but the book’s message was just now being absorbed into my skin. Maybe it’s a lesson I needed to experience to learn.

What do I really want to leave behind? Hopefully a lot of nice memories (and some memories that are just “memorable”) and some undiscovered stories. Said stories would be well-hidden, but some soul may find them, hand-written and locked in a cellar, or drifting in a bottle somewhere out at sea, or by accident by finding this blog, written by some anonymous person, somewhere out there in the universe.

Clothes I have sold in the last two months:

• 13 pairs of pants

• 12 tee shirts

• 4 button-up shirts

• 3 jackets

• 8 pairs of shorts

I do not miss any of them, nor do I feel guilt or shame for having bought them in the first place. At some point in time I made a purchase because I felt a certain fear-based way. I later realized that I made a mistake. You live and you learn. Onward march. Life’s too short to dwell. Cells are constantly dying and being born. People can change at any time of any day of any year.

The closet is much lighter, and I have no intention of replacing the things I sold.

What do I want to get out of this?

I want to re-shift the focus of my thoughts. We only have so much time to think. I want my thoughts to be maneuvered away from buying and towards experiences and connections. There is a lot of world to explore and a lot of things to do. A lot of risks to take. Connection and experience deserve much more time than consumption.

Things are just things. They do not think, feel, or validate. There is never enough of them, and there is rarely a deficiency of them. We don’t need to buy much. Go down the rabbit hole, and you’ll realize that you don’t need to buy anything.

The closet is lighter. Let’s see what’s next.

Mimetic Desires and the Art of Being Scrappy

For most of my life, I have been what I consider “scrappy.” I did have one relatively brief flirtation with the pursuit of material things. It lasted about a year and a half, and was born from a number of events that are another story entirely. For the most part, however, I have not followed the normal trajectory of pursuing “stuff”. Stuff does not usually interest me unless it enhances the things I can do. Experiences therefore reign supreme.

“We move from a teeming college dorm to an apartment to a house, and if we’re really wealthy, to an estate. We think we’re moving up, but really we’re walling ourselves off.” - Eric Weiner

The chase for more is born from mimetic desires. We form our desires by studying the desires of other people. It is only natural because we are social creatures. It is what salesmen and influencers prey on.

On a materialistic level, we pursue the homes, cars, clothes, shoes, gadgets, devices, and screens that everyone is in a chase to own. The race makes us frenzied dogs foaming at the mouth for more. We believe we need “it”, whatever “it” is. A model flaunts it in a chic location, under a perfect lighting scheme. It sheens on a corporate VP’s wrist, and the diamonds tantalize! It is everywhere, omnipresent, hovering around us like God, whispering to us that we lack it, but that perhaps if we swipe our credit cards it will bring us salvation. Salvation, of course, is constantly just out of our grasp.

I try to remember: there are some races that are impossible to win.

I have never felt much mimetic desire for things. Only when mistakenly engaging myself in a social competition do they arise. Only for one brief period did I give in to the race. For the most part, however, I was never even on the track.

I lived in a garage during my last year in Los Angeles. I followed that with three years of living with my parents, in my old bedroom, while I worked full time.

For my first major foray into work, I bought one pair of twenty dollar shoes at Wal-Mart and wore them until the soles were completely removed from the uppers.

I drove the first college vehicle I bought until I moved to China, and owning one vehicle felt like owning one too many. I sold it when I knew I was China-bound.

I lived in the cheapest apartment in Chapel Hill with a roommate shortly after moving out of my parents’ house, with approximately 700 total square feet of space to share. I rented it because it was the cheapest apartment I’d ever heard of.

I moved to China for two years. Most of my first year was spent in a dormitory with little heating and no A/C. I spent the summers sweating and the winters sleeping in my winter gloves, jacket, and scarf. I spent most of my second year in an apartment bedroom smaller than most closets. It had a severe roach infestation that I battled until my return to the United States.

My homes, my clothes, my shoes, my cars, were often the worst, and I never cared. I never cared because it meant avoiding debt.

Harsh conditions do not trouble me, nor do people with nice things.

I returned to America at age 33 and it is probably no surprise that scrappiness is now engrained in me. My current apartment is 800 square feet and that feels like way too much. I bought a car fully with cash in 2019 and it also felt like too much, so I sold it in 2020.

I am scrappy by nature. I prefer to sweat. I enjoy wiping dead bugs off my brow and legs after a long summer bike ride.

My mind goes to day 2 of my recent bikepacking adventure. I’m somewhere outside the north entrance to Skyline Drive, at a camp site pretty far removed from what most would call “civilization.”

Next to our tent is a trailer, and outside the trailer is a shirtless man, living alone, drinking a beer and watching the sunset. He’s smiling, but it isn’t the simple urban smile of someone posing for a selfie in front of a cappuccino. Out by the Blue Ridge Mountains, he has nothing he needs to buy. He’s smiling because the mountains are enough.

Remove exposure to those who desire things, and you remove the desires for those same things.

This means removing the people who pursue “more” from your close proximity, but it also means removing exposure to the gadgets that bring them within close proximity.

This is no easy task. How badly do you want to leave behind your longing for more?