A post on minimalism If movies have taught me one thing it is this: every great relationship experiences fall out. Social media and I are going on a break. In the wake of Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism, I’ve been convicted to address my technology problem. A relationship expert might say my phone and I have a co-dependent power struggle with poorly defined boundaries and exhausting mental maintenance requirements. Here are some examples. Each morning I open my phone for a daily reading. Before I get there, I’ve opened the wrong folder and three other apps. The alert from my weekly screen time report vibrates in my pocket on the second song each Sunday at church. I struggle to refocus. What if it is something else? After too many weeks of fragmented worship I realized I should put my phone on do not disturb when I arrive. If you are curious the data for the last 7 days is 64 pickups and 2 hrs. 17 minutes per day. When I have trouble sleeping I whip out my phone. When I’m bored I whip out my phone. When I’m uncomfortable I whip out my phone. When I don’t know where I am going I whip out my phone. When I have a random thought I whip out my phone. My favorite jeans have a hole worn in the pocket from the number of times my phone goes in and out. It would be more embarrassing to be this honest if I did not see millions with the same affliction. Most of the situations I described are commonplace and there is a cultural bias against people without these issues. In the intro Newport hammered me with this statement, “We added new technologies to the periphery of our experience for minor reasons, then woke one morning to discover that they had colonized the core of our daily life.” The improper relationship with my phone is robbing me of quality stimulation, robbing others of my attention and respect, robbing myself of highly valuable time, and robbing nature of my awe and wonder. It is fragmenting my attention and destroying my focus. These are the hard truths of evaluation and breakup. Let’s get to the good part. My great hope for this breakup is this: if social media and I are meant to be we will rejoin stronger than ever with a clearly defined and healthy relationship. We will live deliberately. To successfully fill my harvested minutes I will be inputting more high ticket activities. Pocket journals, better conversations, quality photos, meaningful projects, home-cooked meals, exercise, poetry, meditation, and prayer. If I exchange half of my pickups for prayers of gratitude there will be immediate side effects of wholesomeness. Garnishing strength from these activities I am confident I'll be capable of integrating social media well, or perhaps living just fine without it. If you have arrived down here, dear reader, I want to encourage you to audit your own technologies. If you live with them deliberately, embrace it. Well done. Technology is a powerful and wonderful tool. If, like me, your phone has begun to own you, then take some real action. Strike at the root. Life is no hollow imitation. It is real, and it is beautiful. Lay your hands on it. Listen to its heart beat. No social media means this blog will be sent out only via email. If you are not already subscribing you can click on the word subscribe below and enter your email to get a weekly update. If you think, “Wow! More people should hear this” and you want to share that would be pretty neat.
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It is always a good time to speak about Minimalism. Sometimes I buy the lie, “There are enough people writing about minimalism, sustainability, and following Jesus. It’s tapped out.” But I see ads and chains, and endless waste and brokenness, and I remember there are billions of dollars spent selling us the idea we need more stuff to be happy, or religious, or whole. Contentment will always be a narrow path, and minimalism is an unnatural joy. We cannot stop writing about it. We cannot stop sharing the hope. Recently, I’ve had an influx of positive input. People I respect brought me excellent artifacts and lent me the exact language I’ve been struggling to find. I am going to step aside and let these profound words stand on their own feet. Digital Minimalism--shared by a trusted church leader In this book Cal Newport addresses the misconception we can manage the damaging parts of technology with “tips, tricks, and hacks”. Specifically, he references things like, setting timers, moving the phone across the room at night, deleting apps for a short period of time, and all the other things I have literally done without successfully eradicating the driving thirst created by my hand-held device. These actions make me feel better instead of making me be better. Life change requires depth in place of surface level adjustment. “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to the one who is striking at the root.” ~from Walden by Henry David Thoreau Newport is going to tell me more about not being controlled by my technology. I am excited and, admittedly, nervous to learn. Technological duplicity is easier than simplicity. But I know minimalism creates space for depth and focus—two things I desperately want. Two things I can have, according to the podcast I reference next. Soul Minimalism--shared by a dedicated sibling In “The Next Right Thing” podcast, Emily P. Freeman starts with an episode called “Soul Minimalism”. Her talk hinges on this statement. “Just like my home, my soul receives frequent input, without frequent output.” She then poses the question, “How am I regularly getting rid of the soul clutter I no longer need? . . difficult conversations, the suspicious glance that someone might give us, the thing we said that we wish we could take back. . . those things are sticky. And they stick in our souls.” She recommends sitting in silence. Creating space to be attentive, and to listen without an agenda. And she invites us to give ourselves permission to do one thing at a time, to reduce our need to do everything at once and replace it with, “the next right thing.” A beautiful and simple invitation to let go of worry and stress and fear. A perfect segue into the next artifact. Celebration of Discipline--shared by a wise friend, relative, coach, and constant example of wisdom In times of need or want or worry it is, for me, easy to cling to things. Anger, bitterness, anxiety, depression, and materialism run easily in and are reluctant to exit. Richard J. Foster introduced me to a simple and profound practice. He called it “palms up, palms down” and it links the body, mentality, and soul posture. “Begin with your palms down as a symbolic indication of your desire to turn over any concerns you may have. . . Whatever it is that weighs on your mind or is a concern to you just say, ‘palms down’. Release it.” Yesterday I palms downed insecurity because I know it is a stepping stone to pride, judgement and the accumulation of negative thought. “Palms downing” insecurity felt more like insurrection than self-deprecation. It’s a freedom, and it side-steps the negative spiral I instigate when I focus on personal weakness. “Palms up.” Here is Foster’s example, “Lord I would like to receive your divine love for John, your peace about the dentist appointment, your patience, your joy.” This exercise is called “centering down.” If you have arrived here, Dear reader, I am going to give you an encouragement. Create time to release. Close the tabs. Let go of the craving and open to the richness of being. You do not have to go and get it. It is already in you. Give it a little bit of space to grow. And now some Birdtalker. “Palms down, palms up.”
Nature is not exclusive or targeted. It's for everyone. Since Earth Day is right around the corner it seems like a great time for a mass appeal post with fun, personal ways to love nature at a grassroots level. Adopt the peace of nature: her secret is patience ~Emerson 1. Go Outside Fall in love with nature and desire to see her beauty persist unspoiled. Fresh air every day, even just 15 minutes of it, improves mood, focus, and physical and mental health. This is one of those things that can be hard to make a daily priority. But, blocking out a specific time to go outside every day, rain or shine, is a medical guarantee for good things in life. I come into the peace of the wild things. . . and am free ~ Wendell Berry 2. Find reliable things During my minimalism shift last summer I came into the realization I had been using at least one Styrofoam cup and one plastic cup every day at work. This didn't fit into my minimalism mindset so I brought a mug to work and eliminated the Styrofoam cup. Then I started washing the mug and using it for water. Then I started using it for oatmeal. Now my mug is a reliable and consistent rhythm of my day. As an added bonus I'd estimate I've saved about 300 cups over the last 8 months, which makes me feel happy. When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world. ~ John Muir 3. Know your place Each of us, whether expressly stated or not, has a set of values that shape our lives. This includes our relation to the environment. Nature has this curious ability to make people feel very small and very important all at once. Earth day is a great time to feel that smallness in relation to the size of everything and that importance as a contributing factor to the overall well-being of everything and then use this perspective to write some environmental values. Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. ~ Jesus 4. Take Action If you've got a desire and a value and some perspective you are poised to make a difference and show your gratitude. There are so many options it can get overwhelming. Don't join in the noise. Pick one or two small areas where you want to make a change in your lifestyle. Oftentimes you will see your change having benefits outside helping the environment. But whatever the change you decide to make, make it sustainable and attainable. You will love the results. Do what you can, with what you have, where you are ~ Theodore Roosevelt 5. Give grace I've always loved nature but felt a little excluded from most environmental groups by a lack of knowledge or because I didn't hit the criteria on every level. I didn't wear the clothes and drive the car and speak the language. But I've realized environmentalists range from Teddy Roosevelt to Ghandi and in authentic environmental discussions there is an understanding that methods are not uniform but intentions and values are uniform. "Sustainable use of natural resources to promote quality of life for the population of the earth" sounds inclusive, yes? That puts farmers, and businesses, and wildlife viewers, and hunters, and carnivores and vegetarians and pretty much everyone on the same side of the line. This idea made environmentalism personal for me. It's universal, not something for specific groups and types. And when it is personal it is much easier to maintain than when it is something I do so I belong to a group or because I feel like I need to appease someone else. So, my encouragement to you is to give yourself grace for shortcomings and make earth day personal. It is for you. It is for your children and your friends and your neighbors. It is for your earth. In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks ~ John Muir Maintaining focus can be a struggle, and when I take time to be quiet all the creeping cravings start to come to mind. “It's cold outside. I want to sleep. I'm bored. Do I have any emails? What's for dinner? I'm hungry. I wonder if I look weird sitting here.” To mitigate the constant stream of thought I use a mindfulness app, and the guide says to treat thoughts like cars. I'm supposed to watch the cars pass. Not chasing the thoughts or resisting them, sitting quietly and indifferently as they go by. It's hard to watch cravings and anxieties pass without indulging them or fighting with them. But it's important if I desire to focus. My attempts to embrace the quiet and make better food choices have made my cravings glaringly obvious. My wife recently rejoined a group-based eating plan with a goal of properly prioritizing food. It works by discerning the needs of the body vs. the desires of the brain. It’s brilliant. When I attempt solidarity in this I am painfully aware of how often my eating is related to things besides sustenance or flavor. It's like I've turned on the light in a cluttered room, worked out a neglected muscle group, or received criticism I know to be true. There is a looming challenge I was happy pretending I didn't know existed. On good days, when I feel all sorts of courageous about myself, I go to work conquering these cravings. I will bend them to my will by focusing on them and fighting them. Easy enough, right? Just do it. But the more I focus on the problems themselves, the less successful I am in overcoming them. I’m chasing the car; not letting it go. And on the bad days, when I'm feeling vulnerable, I indulge the craving because my focus is misapplied, and I am tired of running. In both scenarios the problem is consuming me. Self-deprecation does not create change. I’m just standing there saying “this room is cluttered, I’m out of shape, I shouldn't feel hungry, I suck. It’s a problem, it’s a problem, I'm a problem”. Recognizing the problem is a good first step, but stepping up and down on the first step isn't climbing the stairs. After recognition of this craving or imperfection should be patience. Best-selling author Stephen Covey is well known for perpetuating the idea that effective people create a space between stimulus and response. Focusing on the stimulus eliminates the space. It sucks me into the craving and clouds my vision. So, when I get the feeling of hunger, or stress, or boredom, instead of attempting to satisfy or refute, I am working on letting it be. And what I have learned in about 1 day of doing this with moderate success is that it is ok to feel hunger. And it is ok to feel bored. And it is ok to feel anxious. What I failed to learn in the week leading up to this revelation is this: Cravings don’t change by strong arming them into submission and trying to keep them pinned. In an often quoted passage about taking captive every thought the Apostle Paul says, "The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world." In response to natural stimuli an unnatural response is patience. A natural response is to indulge, engage, or resist. By reducing the power and attention my cravings receive they become passive and submissive instead of controlling. They are cars rolling by. In the case of silence and meditation, “gently returning to the breath” becomes the focus, rather than the craving. In the case of food, or screens, I do not fixate on fighting or indulging the craving. I try to give it some space, and this may help me to identify deeper issues and create a long-term solution or more productive response. Space lets my vision grow clearer, allowing me to be more present, more discerning, and more engaged. It's a challenging thing to wrap my head around. To beat a craving I can't cater to it, and I can't ignore it. I just have to let it be. And let myself be. It's uncomfortable. But, I have faith it can be accomplished. My weapons are not the weapons of the world. Dear Reader, if you have made it this far, thank you. My encouragement to you is to recognize a craving, or an imperfection and let it go this week. Let the heaviness go and stop wearing yourself out chasing the car. Do not rush to judgement on stimulus, good or bad. Let it be. Your story is not the sum of your weaknesses and failures. It is a story of uncommon patience and unusal strength in the midst of imperfection. If you want to subscribe and get an email alert for next week you can do that here. And if you feel like this could help somebody else and want to share that would be cool too. A quick preview: In October of last year, after reading my post on minimalism and desire my brother sent me this story. “When an evil spirit leaves a person, it goes into the desert, seeking rest but finding none. Then it says, ‘I will return to the person I came from.’ So, it returns and finds its former home empty, swept, and in order. Then the spirit finds seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they all enter the person and live there. And so that person is worse off than before.” I’m realizing the importance of this a little more all the time. Releasing a craving and cleaning up doesn’t mean it won’t come back. It means it will return and if the house is not occupied it will settle in with a host of other evils. I talk and write a great deal about letting go of things like material possessions, insecurities, and cravings. Next week I am going to start writing about being filled up by letting go. It's counter-intuitive. I’m excited about it. ***A final note: I am not a fan of disclaimers, but this is vitally important. The things I’ve been talking about are cravings. And cravings come and go. Addictions are different. They don’t come and then go. They hang out. And they require different strategies from people with clinical knowledge. It’s not so cool when stigma prevents humans from having awesome lives. It’s unbelievably cool that there are humans dedicating their work to helping people with really difficult problems.
My heart is obsessive by nature and slipping into dependence is simple for me. When there is craving there is inevitable blindness to anything but the burning quest for satisfaction, and this disregard for personal well-being and the welfare of others leads to sad places—places hollow, shallow, and void of beauty. Things that may have been lovely are ruined by thirst and greed, like a dirty polluted river lined with warped trees and dilapidated houses. I see hate and am repulsed but have felt hate in my own heart. I see greed and it angers me, but I find myself manipulating to get my way. Heaviness descends. Hope vanishes. Obsession intensifies, and I cycle downwards believing I am striving for happiness.
But, the hope and beauty there is in this life I have not found by pacing with the world in the quest for pleasure. Even the good things lack purity and wholeness. When I realize I have jumped into the pursuit of happiness I am reminded of this quote from Emerson. “The problem of restoring to the world original and eternal beauty is solved by the redemption of the soul.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson Here is an uncomfortable statement from a well-known poem. “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.” I would love to believe this is not true, because it voids me of my responsibility. But, my humanity gives me the freedom to choose what to do with the unconquerable piece of myself—the piece no one can touch unless I let them. My daily inclination is to pollute, to dwell on angry thoughts and feelings until they burn up into rage because I want to feel, and I want to blame. But, these feelings twist me up and leave me tense and selfish and tired. God’s great desire is for me to choose every day to give my soul back. To take everything off the shelf, wipe everything down, and vacuum out the corners. Embracing minimalism is my way of trying to eliminate my pack rat nature. The unsatisfied parts of my soul desire to take something good and ruin it with obsessive craving, so I must give things up. While minimalism is a great picture of emptying out matter, it has no effect without tending to my soul. Taking time to address thoughts and empty the mind, pray and release worry, read and let the words alter my will, these are the objectives of minimalism. And as I let go of my life and make tiny waves with my own actions I see and feel God fill me up with big waves of purpose.* This is my last post on minimalism. But, my hope is this is only the start of what is to come through my continued efforts to lose myself in the beauty of God’s will for my life. So, dear reader, my challenge for you is to make tiny waves. Even if it is 60 seconds, take time every day for the soul. Your soul is your responsibility. Test your heart, your desires and your intentions. Labor and wait. You have purpose beyond happiness and you are loved more than you can fathom. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? **"Tiny tiny waves, tiny tiny waves, big waves" is a song created by my nephew and is not my original content. ** Fear gripping me almost as tightly as my left hand was gripping a branch thin enough for my thumb to touch my middle finger, dangling 45 feet in the air above the water, feet walking on empty space, body swaying from the bending branch and stiffening storm breeze. My upper body was one clenched muscle of trembling petrification. Something in my will to experience got me to this point, but everything in my brain and body was rejecting intention. Whether or not I chose to be terrified did not matter. There was an iron lock on my ability to move and the fear held the key; it was taunting me. I played little games, counting to three, closing my eyes and imagining myself letting go, calling myself names, encouraging myself with the idea of feeling the earth under my feet, torturing myself with the knowledge that retreat was impossible. Minutes passed. The breeze stiffened, and the sky darkened. My friends did cycles of activity, staring at me, yelling at me, and losing interest and talking among themselves. At long last nature impatiently, mercifully, had enough. What I thought was thunder was the crack of the branch and seconds after the noise it snapped beneath the weight and the sudden downward movement forced me to let go. I started a free fall. I can feel myself internally in the moment and see myself externally watching from the end of the lake. Dark sky, dark water, the empty space between the tall sycamore and water disrupted by me. The distance between the falling object and water shortening, arms and legs flailing. In the moment, from my internal perspective I could feel myself climbing the emptiness with outstretched hands and arms trying to get back to the petrifyingly still, torturous, dangling. The drop was not wholly bad and could have been enjoyable without the surprise and terror consuming me as I plunged towards the water. Squishy earth between my toes felt more relieving than any pain from smacking my body against the water. Heavy beating, rushing blood pulsing through my body and sharp clean breath in my lungs made me feel deliriously happy. The immersion cleansed the fear and the water trickled down my skin in satisfying droplets. These feelings intensified my resolve to do it again—to feel the sense of freedom associated with falling through the air and landing safely. Less intense and dangerous measures but similar feelings, (gut sick fear), arose when I parted with my books last week. My will was strong enough to do so without nature inserting its dominance, but there is a baffling confusion when I reflect on my physical reaction to such meaningless objects. It wears on the emotion and induces some strange sort of stress followed by equal amounts of liberty. Removing the unnecessary and facing fear is exhausting, but it leaves me with space and experience. Space to fill with something wonderful I hope—space to feel the freedom of doing something uncomfortable and unconventional and living outside the lockstep. Space for ideas and actions and love. Here is a truth I have discovered. Many of the things I find most terrifying in life—the things most restraining—can be broken and overcome (with help), and the freedom is real. The letting go allows space for hope and joy beyond imagination, space for God to fill me up and show His strength. I feel the weight of things done or lost or left behind or broken and let them go. And then I am not afraid to turn up the music and roll the windows down, sweat, jump, sprint, laugh, change and live free. I am open and refreshed because I have faced the terror of letting go and free falling into grace. I heard a great man and youth leader say once, When people get down crying you get them up dancing." –Bill Toombs I firmly believe this is God’s desire. He replaces brokenness with joy strong beyond circumstances. His aim is not to replace pride with frustration and self deprecation but with wisdom and humility. He does not want for people to live in shame and guilt but rather walk in happiness and peace. His goal is not to suppress and hush life but to release wonder and jubilance and reverence. These things are in Him and He is in me. So, I seek to make room for Him by losing more of myself--to make big space for love and joy and action as I lose a mindset of negativity and of control. I will breathe in deeply and see the world clearly. I will not be afraid to live. Don’t wait for the branch to crack. Jump. “Let us then be up and doing With a heart for any fate Still achieving; still pursuing Learn to labor, and to wait.” ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow There’s a chance I should have titled this fear, but I like courage better. Each weekday morning, I walk up to a six-story building with an all glass exterior reflecting the morning sunlight. I enter the far right set of three double doors into a two-story atrium with simple modern décor and step approximately 15 yards to my first big decision of the day. On the right are three shiny elevator doors prepared to lift me quickly and painlessly to my fifth-floor destination. On the left is a faux wood door, unmarked, with five flights of concrete steps. Days when I’m convicted I’ve started this conversation in the car. Days when I’m late or have recently embarked on a newfangled motivated journey I have an easy decision. Elevator for the first, stairs for the latter. Most days I am convicted and arguing with myself all the way to the point where I press the plastic up arrow and watch it light up. “I worked out this week. My legs are tired. It takes too long. I haven’t eaten yet. I’m still half asleep. I may start sweating. I’ll be out of breath walking in and that’s embarrassing.” This elementary elevator issue is an accurate depiction of my entire day. And life is the sum of our days after all. In this instant I can make a choice to be brave and take the road less comfortable, the road leading to increased blood flow and cognition, and better long-term health. For me, the elevator is the entryway to doing things comfortably rather than intentionally and living without discipline and subsequent meaning. It is a road where I acquiesce to the ebb and flow of luxury and spend and accumulate and take the elevator and forego the run and forget the to-do list and watch one more episode and have one more cookie because I got out of bed after hitting snooze three times and went to work and earned the right to fleeting happiness. For me, the elevator starts a slide into self-pity; it begins an indulgence in short term happiness when long-term happiness is 10-feet to my left. There is nothing wrong with comfort or convenience in my life. The issue is intention. Many times, I find myself folding to any desire because I lack the willpower or the foresight to do something else. Yesterday I read this quote from “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’ Brien (10/10 would recommend reading at least the first chapter). Courage, I seemed to think, comes to us in finite quantities, like an inheritance, and by being frugal and stashing it away and letting it earn interest, we steadily increase our moral capital in preparation for that day when the account must be drawn down. It was a comforting theory. It dispensed with all those bothersome little acts of daily courage; it offered hope and grace to the repetitive coward; it justified the past while amortizing the future." This made me squirm. “Those bothersome little acts of daily courage.” When I throw things out or give them away I get a gut feeling that asks “what if…someday…remember when?” and I start to argue with myself like I do at the elevator. I believe there are things I need, things I’ve earned. But these things are there to accumulate comfort, to sidestep action, and they stand in the way of making daily change and progress. The wonderful thing about owning books instead of reading books is I get the pleasure of exhibiting my knowledge to people without the daily action of reading them. In this way I become the Christian who is not bothered with the daily acts of forgiving, or smiling, or giving generously, or volunteering time, or going the extra mile. I can take the title without the courage of character.
The more I roll the idea of daily courage around in my mind the more attractive it becomes. Challenging, yes. But what a beautiful thing. Courage that surpasses the fear of death, the fear of pointless existence, the fear of other people, the fear of myself, the fear of failure, and the fear of regret. Courage to take the stairs, courage to pray gratefully, courage to say difficult words, courage to smile genuinely at strangers, courage to perform my job functions diligently, courage to forgive people who wrong me, courage to make a to-do list and tackle it, courage to make goals and pursue them, courage to fall asleep without the television, courage to drink more water and less coffee, courage to speak words so that others may have courage, and courage to believe I am valued and loved. This is courage rooted in a place where courage is not in short supply. These acts of daily courage start by living, by acting, by doing something challenging. Longfellow, in one of the best pieces of poetry ever written“A Psalm of Life”, said, “Life is real, life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal Dust thou art to dust returnest Was not spoken of the soul” (Please read the whole thing. I’ve linked it here). This is my firm belief. This is my great courage. There is life after this, and there is redemption in this life, and they both are in the Spirit. So, dear reader, here is my challenge for you. Take the stairs in your life. Get rid of that comfortable thing preventing you from taking the next step. Find the things you’ve assembled for comfort or pity and be brave. Practice bravery by being intentional every day. One day you may face something huge, an opportunity or a conversation or a heroic act, and the little steps you took this week will give you the ability to stare it right in the face with more courage and nobility than you could have ever imagined. Start today. Dear Reader,
Typically, I avoid referencing you until the end to avoid projection and generalization. My posts are designed for reflection. They help me make sense of the world, and if they help others that’s good too. Today I want to project a little bit because my thoughts are about being a human and not only about being me. This is a letter from my heart to yours, dear reader, about letting things go. I know a portion of the challenges associated with release, with change, with moving past. We release because we want to, we need to, and sometimes because we are forced to. We release things as small and insignificant as a pair of socks and as large and weighty as a child to college, to a spouse, or to the world. I can’t speak to you from experience about the latter, but I have felt the sadness and difficulty of giving things up and submitting to change. In my recent life, baseball ended, school ended, life without adulting ended, and I traded numerous small titles and roles for a few large ones. Massive upheaval in my daily schedule and responsibilities ensued and the sheer force of change was more than my emotional intelligence could handle. I’ve come to realize an aversion to change is more natural for me than acceptance. In comparison to things like death of a loved one, loss of a job, war in a country, or economic downturn, my second example still seems small. It is. But human identity is complex. Justifying feelings because our circumstances are not as bad or as good as others won’t lead to a resolution of the void. In my life the absence of baseball left a very real hole. I lost more than a game. I lost social interaction and community, physical exercise, intentional living, mental stimulation, and spiritual reflection. Ignoring the value of the sport in my life only left me more frustrated. The things I lost were evident elsewhere, but baseball carried the brunt of it. Change was imminent, and it found me unprepared. My current efforts in minimalism are designed to help me prepare to accept change. I release things to root out this gnawing human desire to assemble a comfortable and secure hut of junk hoping it will fill me up. Without resisting these desires or creating new ones we end up like a pack rat holing ourselves into a compilation of things that bring supposed comfort. We close ourselves off and live in a secure situation, missing all the beautiful things outside. In addition to things made of matter and atoms we assemble to ourselves feelings of anger, frustration, helplessness, regret, guilt, and bitterness and build a locked house to store them. It is good to feel these things. It is good to be human and know the struggle, the pain, the emptiness, the helplessness. I’m learning to feel the emotion to miss the thing I had or wanted, and then release it. Let it go. Set new intentions and experience the freedom of controlling what is controllable and loosing what is not. There is function, there is beginning, and there is end. Removing things from my life has been complex and emotional. It has induced reflection, recalled pain, and promoted healing. Quite possibly the greatest lesson minimalism has taught me is this: Being human is a sentence. It is finitude. The seasons mark time on our souls as nature submits to the flow and order of birth, death, and regeneration. We will experience sorrow and void and adjustment we will grow and laugh and create and enjoy because it is the sweetness of life to know the beginnings and the ends. “Sorrow may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning.” The minimalist is prepared to accept change. I inhaled deeply, feeling the seams intentionally with the ends of my index and middle fingers and the sides of my ring and pinky finger. Exhaled fully bringing the shoulders down with the breath and letting the weight fall out of them as the words roll from brain to tongue to heart. “I am a child of God.” Plant the right foot firmly on the right side of the rubber, straighten the hat, and then loosen the body as the right thumb falls over the rest of the baseball and the eyes peer forward for the sign. Week 3 of minimalism has resurfaced questions surrounding value. When I measure the value of items I think about it’s purpose in my life rather than it’s purchase price. If it’s function is not evident, or it’s use is obsolete, it can go. Using this subjective standard of value has proved fruitful. Sifting through the items in my home and pondering macroeconomics and purchasing behavior invoked some vivid memories. Qualitative measurement tools were my primary lens for understanding value until I began my MBA classes. I was introduced to valuation models and informed everything is, or should be, quantifiable. I liked it. There is a standard of measurement and meaning. Quantifying value is one of the difficulties professionals in the field of my undergraduate degree (communication) seek to overcome. For about two years I’ve accepted these ideas of quantifiable value. But going through my things there are numerous items mixed up in my emotions as well as my stuff, and getting rid of them is surgical rather than therapeutic. Factoring sentimental value into minimalism has been as much of a challenge for me as explaining how PR impacts the bottom line. So, by following my train of thought back to the beginning, I’m trying to adjust my mindset instead of forsaking my newfound course of action. My MBA courses started while I was also in my final season of baseball, and it was not going well. Self-imposed pressure to perform and misguided value in my results induced a mental block. Two major issues arose from this mentality. 1. While I was playing I did not handle failure well. 2. When I was finished I was left with an enormous void. Post baseball my marriage and job received the brunt of the pressure I previously placed on the game. But I find when my primary source of value originates from attempts to attain love and happiness from people and things I am prone to despair. For example: if my value comes from being a husband I am limited in the forgiveness I can extend because the foundation of my love is rooted in her opinion of me and my performance. But, I am imperfect and so is my wife. Which leaves me squeezing out the value and stifling the love. Even worse it leads to things like coverup instead of total transparency or surface level devotion in exchange for affirmation. This same mentality plagued my ability as a baseball player. When my sense of value came from my athletic performance, failure equated to feelings of purposelessness, and I let this decimate my courage. Only when I started to take the mound with an attitude of prayer and affirm that my worth was not tied to my performance did I begin to play well. Affirmation came from repeating this statement when I began to be overwhelmed, “I am a child of God.” I firmly believe value is an important element for life as we know it to persist. It tracks utility, quality, scarcity, and other factors to help us understand the world. I’ll continue to work on adopting some sort of system of economic value regarding my active minimalism. For now, I am content to know value without a healing of the soul leaves things valueless. Everything else is soft, everything will fall. My great courage and hope is this; I am loved, and that is enough. As I mold my ideas of material value I must find a way to incorporate my thoughts on personal value into daily living. “Whilst the abstract question occupies your thought; nature brings it in the concrete to be solved by the hands.” Ralph Waldo Emerson. When I am living happily and with open arms of generosity and gratitude, the source is daily practice. Exercise, reading, writing, meditation and affirmation. Affirmation is a key source of value; it’s like stretching for the soul. And, like stretching, it only works when I really feel it. Here is an affirmation I’ve been working on. “I feel, and I am, rich towards God when I let go of my insecurities by daily sitting down to remember forgiveness in my life, compassion towards others, and peace in all things material.” Love the Lord, Love the world, work for nothing. -Wendell Berry So, reader, if you have arrived at this point I hope you can take a shorter route than I did to remembering where true value can be found and where it cannot. When your value is dependent on some external thing you rob that thing of it’s freedom, and subsequently it’s beauty. But when your value is independent of things, they can reveal their authentic loveliness and enrich your life. Write an affirmation, or several, and work them into daily practice in your heart and in your actions. Define value, build value, and remember that you are loved, and that is enough.
Week two of my paradigm shift has been similar to week one. My emotional response to parting with items is lessening. Its been a social week spent primarily out of the house without much excess time to work through my possessions. A list of locations I want to uncover is increasing all the time, and I’m antsy to dive into everything but the books. My first “one for one” trade-out session with clothes occurred, and an upgrade, at no cost, while maintaining the overall size of my wardrobe was a good feeling. I’m excited to continue. A new minimalist revelation came in a brief conversation with my dad on Sunday night as we recapped our weekends. We both went camping in separate locations. I camped with a fan and Dad without. I spent my day relaxing in the water and shade; he spent his hiking and playing outdoor games. I complained about the heat and he remained positive. He didn’t need to say anything reproachful to me, but my reflection on our conversation impacted the way I started Monday—with a heart full of gratitude instead of negativity. I’m grateful to have a father who champions the power of a positive attitude. My father-in-law uttered a similar principle this weekend. “You know what I’ve found? It is true that the key to contentment in life is to pray thankfully”. These are two hard-working and inspirational people—deeply admired in their families and communities for their ability to live with simplicity and kindness. As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them. ~JFK Gratitude is a powerful posture—often overlooked. Negative messages cry loud and stay long. Complaining is conversational and vastly easier than examining the quality. But, as I continue my minimalism shift I’m discovering the simplest messages are essential for a thriving life.
As I sort through my life I see how easily I grow accustomed to things and begin to view them as ordinary. Things I once saw as beautiful have become commonplace. The author of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty wrote, “Beautiful things don’t call out for attention.” I’m beginning to agree. Some of the loveliest things in my life take a back seat to the boisterous. Items and tasks bombarding my brain divert my attention from the beauty of a simple, “I love you” from my wife as she climbs into bed and inches close to me to sleep. I forget how grateful I ought to be to have comfortable sheets, how nice it is to feel soft carpet on my bare feet in the morning, how invigorating it is when the refrigerator keeps the clean water cold. I don’t say thank you for the warmth of her cheek when I kiss her goodbye in the morning, and I miss my daily opportunities to be content with the moment. Ralph Waldo Emerson closes his essay Nature with potent rhetoric about detaching from the situation and examining reality with science in one hand and affection in the other. “It will not need, when the mind is prepared for study, to search for objects. The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.” So, reader, here is my encouragement for you and for myself. Examine the everyday good things, the things normalized and overlooked. Take them in as richly as you can with your senses and your emotions and observe them with your knowledge of fact. Absorb the feeling of goodness pulsing through you, and when you have fully experienced the meaning, say thank you. Plant a memory of gratitude in your mind and let it alter your speech and your actions for the day. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” |
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I'm a Hoosier. I like the outdoors. Taxes are my job. I write for a living. This Blog
Writing my way to an adult life of minimalism, sustainability, and joy rooted in Truth. I'm learning, unlearning, and relearning.
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