Going the Minimalist Way in 2021

What is minimalism? Minimalism is intentionally living with only the things that we certainly need. It’s having and being surrounded by lesser material items, so we can do more with our time and life.

I guess you could say I was living the Singaporean dream. But then, some events that happened in my life in year 2020 have forced me to look around and start to question what had become my life’s focus.

I realized that I was so focused on so-called success, achievement and especially on the accumulation of (unnecessary) stuff. I might be living the Singaporean dream but it wasn’t my dream.

It took getting everything I thought I wanted to realize that maybe everything I ever wanted wasn’t actually what I wanted at all.

Marketers today are really impressive in their ability to manipulate our mind, in their ability to create a need or a perceived need out of something that was a ‘want’.

We also live in the most advertised-to culture in the history of the world. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent telling us we need this and that and it has an effect. And the end goal is always the same. To get us to buy more stuff we don’t necessarily need.

Some advertisements constantly make us subconsciously feel like we are inadequate like if we don’t own this product. This bombardment of messages that we are not enough.

So think about what that does to people, just every day, over and over, getting messages imply ‘you are not enough’. Your hair, your clothes, your skin and your body is not enough. So then we want to go be enough.

And because we’ve lost these other ways of being enough, ways like having a community, having a purpose, having an identity besides the brand on us. Because we’ve lost those, we misplace our desire for belonging and satisfaction by buying more stuff.

Everybody’s selling something but that doesn’t mean that selling is always bad. It’s okay. We still need to buy that groceries, that food and all, right? But it’s not always compatible with what it is we truly need from most sellers on the market.

So this year, I’m going to experience new freedom with the pursuit of minimalism. Will update on my next post what are some easy ways to becoming a minimalist. Ciao!