Minimalism

Try to look at the things that are in the drawers of your study desk. I can guess that there will be some things that have not been touched for a few months, even years. Among them there will be things that you bought at a bazaar just because you think it is cute. You never used it because you don’t need it, but you feel that your money will become a waste if you get rid of it. So the item is stuck in the drawers without having its share of use in the world.

Well that is the problem with nearly half of my possessions. The items are from little things like all sizes of adhesive labels, a box full of hair clips from the nineties that are too childish too be worn, up to huge rolls of posters that I took off from my wall, because I hate how the people on the poster were watching me when I sleep. I always kept them lying about in my room without ever thinking that they could be of greater use, had I let them be possessed by someone else in need.

Not just my drawer, but the room was filled with un-useful things that drive my mother crazy, because she believes in minimalism. In how I view it, minimalism is a way of life where you only possess things that are useful for sustaining. She has been a devoted practitioner since she was born, and her office has no aesthetic ornaments at all. I never buy in to her idealism, because I used to believe that cute items give happiness in life.

Then my mother told me to clean up my bedroom. She gathered all my things on the floor and forced me to determine which items that I cannot live without, and which items that will be more useful if it is given to someone else. It was then that I realized that there are more un-useful things than the useful ones. I now understand that those things have nothing to do with my personal growth in being a better person, and they will not help me with anything other than taking up spaces in my room. So, every time I encounter something nice in a store, I ask myself “Do you need it or do you want it?”