Prakash Shesh
Minimalists are happier with less of everything – less wealth, fewer assets, less number of gadgets, less or no luxuries, less ego, less consumption and no excesses. MK Gandhi was a minimalist who had famously said that nature has enough for everyone’s needs but not enough for their greed. Minimalism is not new to India; all sages in our mythological stories were minimalists. Many were credited with meditating and praying for decades without even the bare necessities that are required to stay alive. Personal sacrifices, self-denial, even fasts – breaks from eating or eating little – are things that Indian culture has consistently glorified because of their ability to purify our thoughts.
Reducing possessions and adopting a simple lifestyle will actually make you more self-sufficient. Isn’t that what we want our children to be? If you rid your life of most excesses, it will help you concentrate on what is really important. Don’t all business schools teach you to be focussed on everything that you do?
A true minimalist, since she gets things done with minimum inputs, always gives more importance to quality rather than quantity. This is a requirement to achieve success and a maxim that we keep impressing upon everyone. It is not difficult to see that sustained minimalism has the potential to rid you of fear from comparison with others – one of the main causes of unhappiness in modern society; worries of how to keep growing your income just for the sake of acquiring more things; guilt of having failed in one’s own eyes and the eyes of the society in which you live and the resultant depression that arises from these negative emotions.
It should be quite evident that reducing one’s desires is a more efficient path to happiness than engaging oneself in achieving increasingly larger targets. Those who embark on a vicious target-achieving spree – and die somewhere in between, still dissatisfied – never realise that the law of diminishing returns is at work. Every incremental acquisition (maybe a costlier car) gives less incremental happiness than the earlier acquisition did.
Despite such incontrovertible evidence, why do we fail to teach our children the benefits of minimalism? Is it because minimalism is only to be appreciated in those mythological stories (we swear on the goodness of our culture) or is it because parents themselves were never taught any of these benefits and hence couldn’t honestly pass them on to the next generation?
Western cultural standards, really a symbol of maximalism, if you can say that, are often treated as a benchmark for success, both by students and parents, without realising that wealth does not lead to happiness except for maybe the initial one-third of our life. The truth is that you need to earn enough to take care of your minimum needs and then practise minimalism in the remaining two-thirds of our life – but will we be able to do that if we have never been trained to live minimally?
The best way to start is now. Make a list of all your possessions that could be donated and give them away to those who need them more. Even a small beginning of this de-cluttering will give you immense happiness that will only grow thereafter. And you will feel quite liberated and peaceful, having to deal with little or no clutter.
DISCLAIMER
The views expressed in the Article above are Author’s personal views and kashmiribhatta.in is not in any way responsible for the opinions expressed in the above article. The article belongs to its respective owner or owners and this site does not claim any right over it. Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing."
Courtesy: Times of India, Speaking Tree, 23rd April, 2019
Prakash Shesh
Minimalists are happier with less of everything – less wealth, fewer assets, less number of gadgets, less or no luxuries, less ego, less consumption and no excesses. MK Gandhi was a minimalist who had famously said that nature has enough for everyone’s needs but not enough for their greed. Minimalism is not new to India; all sages in our mythological stories were minimalists. Many were credited with meditating and praying for decades without even the bare necessities that are required to stay alive. Personal sacrifices, self-denial, even fasts – breaks from eating or eating little – are things that Indian culture has consistently glorified because of their ability to purify our thoughts.
Reducing possessions and adopting a simple lifestyle will actually make you more self-sufficient. Isn’t that what we want our children to be? If you rid your life of most excesses, it will help you concentrate on what is really important. Don’t all business schools teach you to be focussed on everything that you do?
A true minimalist, since she gets things done with minimum inputs, always gives more importance to quality rather than quantity. This is a requirement to achieve success and a maxim that we keep impressing upon everyone. It is not difficult to see that sustained minimalism has the potential to rid you of fear from comparison with others – one of the main causes of unhappiness in modern society; worries of how to keep growing your income just for the sake of acquiring more things; guilt of having failed in one’s own eyes and the eyes of the society in which you live and the resultant depression that arises from these negative emotions.
It should be quite evident that reducing one’s desires is a more efficient path to happiness than engaging oneself in achieving increasingly larger targets. Those who embark on a vicious target-achieving spree – and die somewhere in between, still dissatisfied – never realise that the law of diminishing returns is at work. Every incremental acquisition (maybe a costlier car) gives less incremental happiness than the earlier acquisition did.
Despite such incontrovertible evidence, why do we fail to teach our children the benefits of minimalism? Is it because minimalism is only to be appreciated in those mythological stories (we swear on the goodness of our culture) or is it because parents themselves were never taught any of these benefits and hence couldn’t honestly pass them on to the next generation?
Western cultural standards, really a symbol of maximalism, if you can say that, are often treated as a benchmark for success, both by students and parents, without realising that wealth does not lead to happiness except for maybe the initial one-third of our life. The truth is that you need to earn enough to take care of your minimum needs and then practise minimalism in the remaining two-thirds of our life – but will we be able to do that if we have never been trained to live minimally?
The best way to start is now. Make a list of all your possessions that could be donated and give them away to those who need them more. Even a small beginning of this de-cluttering will give you immense happiness that will only grow thereafter. And you will feel quite liberated and peaceful, having to deal with little or no clutter.
DISCLAIMER
The views expressed in the Article above are Author’s personal views and kashmiribhatta.in is not in any way responsible for the opinions expressed in the above article. The article belongs to its respective owner or owners and this site does not claim any right over it. Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing."
Courtesy: Times of India, Speaking Tree, 23rd April, 2019