Actually Matters

Solitude | Source

Being happier with less.

The world is too full of clutter. Our physical world is bombarded with things and people that want to distract us enough to leach time or money. Our mental world is often filled with the useless white noise of overthinking things that don’t actually matter.

I often find myself unable to write because of this, beyond that, I find that the amount of information and choices we’re presented with each day hinders our ability to do what we actually want.

This is why I’m embarking on a search for frugality. Now, that may sound a bit odd at first, but I’m not talking about deprivation from fiscal assets, as the word is usually defined as. Instead, it’s about self-reliance — a value which I think is underappreciated. Essentially, making a game out of boosting the quality of your life with as little as possible.

Capitalism and politics as a whole are a difficult subject to get into without subjective arguing and semantics, but I think it’s fair to say that Western society operates with consumers in mind. I don’t think we should be content with that — or that this is an adequate response to life. Rather, we need a purpose larger than consumption.

How much you have doesn’t matter, in the end, they don’t allow you to bring cheques into the coffin. The only thing that does matter is how much you’ve given.

Where you currently stand.

It’s difficult to admit that there are times where I feel hopeless, as though I have nothing. But when I actually take a moment to actually take stock of what’s in my life, I can see the abundance that there really is.

And I think this can honestly be applied to anyone. No matter who you are or where your life is, you have something. You have oxygen in your lungs. Even if you’re at rock bottom, you at least have a solid foundation to begin rebuilding yourself.

It’s important to meditate on this, because once you know what you have, you can begin to figure out what you no longer need.

Discarding

Things I’m cutting out from my life.

As an extension of my previous article, I will be detailing a list of things that I personally think it best for me to stop and let go of. Eventually I’ll conglomerate this article, and more in the future, with the Manifesto as a whole. There’s probably enough information for each specific point that I could write entire articles about them in the future.

• Junk. Where you live is as much as a temple as your body is. Decluttering your kitchen, bedroom and living room of all the unnecessary objects is oddly therapeutic. A lot of people feel as though this is the only thing you need to do when making space, but I think it’s just one step.
• Cleaning products. A surprising amount of housekeeping products are filled with chemicals that are actually bad for you. You can pretty much get anything clean with either castile soap, vinegar, baking soda or Borax.
• Unhealthy food. Processed, glucose-fructose and white carbs (flour, bread, etc.) are unnatural and our body has difficulty processing them. Multi-grain is a good alternative, but prioritizing other food groups like protein and lentils is better.
• Social Media. Anytime spent on Facebook, Reddit and even Medium (unless I’m writing) is essentially wasted time. There are better ways to catch up with people, and there’s no need to read up on new happenings every day.
• Smartphone Usage. By extension, there’s time wasted mindlessly looking at your phone every fifteen minutes. Some people have gone to the extreme of replacing it with a flip phone, but my lack of direction causes me to rely on Google Maps too much to do that.
• Television. Cord-cutting is the phenomenon that is going to overtake modern cable as we know it. It’s easier and cheaper to stream what you enjoy from the internet. Not only that, but there’s a constant bombardment of advertising that promote the wasteful consumerism that I’m trying to avoid.

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About B. Kenneth Brown