Do you know what my first word was? 'More'. My mother laughs as she tells this story. It's funny because it involves a greedy child reaching for moooorrrreee food. I get mock-defensive and argue that if Granddad was shoving food towards me and saying 'more?', what on earth was I going to say?

But that's been me to a tee. More food. More sex. More drugs. More surfing. More literature. More bingeing. More life. I have always found less to be difficult. When one finds something enjoyable, why stop? Why not grab it with lips and tongue and skin and cry morrreee?

Yet as you get older, you realise that life is about shedding so you are lighter when you leave the earth.

In yogic philosophy, vairagya refers to a detachment or dispassion toward material and worldly pursuits - the opposite of the hedonism I enjoyed in my youth. I felt an immediate connection to this idea once I realised it wasn't about not enjoying or participating in life's pleasures, but just not being overly attached to outcomes such as 'happiness'. True happiness and fulfillment, this philosophy says, are beyond the fluctuations of material existence. True happiness and freedom are within us and have little to do with external circumstances.

Whilst I'm far from achieving - or even having a dedicated practice to - spiritual enlightenment, I do think some kind of transcendence from unbound desires is necessary to ease suffering a little. It serves a practical purpose. First of all, it helps calm the mind - if I am always thinking of what I 'want' - health, a career, money, more things - it causes anxiety and stress.

Second of all, I'm bloody stubborn. I recognize how advertising and society are constantly influencing us to live an ideal life that depends on material stuff that is supposed to bring happiness through respect from others, reputation, and so on. I reject this brainwashing so wholeheartedly I'm known to refuse things even if they might make my life marginally better. For example, I refused a rice cooker for thirty years until one day I used one and realized it is quite a useful bit of kit. That's probably a banal example, but you get the idea - tell me to buy something because it'll somehow improve my life, and I will stubbornly refuse it. I was totally bemused once when Jamie bought me a Google home assistant. What, I laughed, I can't look up the weather on my phone? We got rid of that soon enough.

I worry, I guess, at how far our society has come from the moral and practical lessons that we used to understand through spiritual practices.

It's why I reject TEMU and am amazed at my friends who order from there. Just because it's cheap and arrives fast and they have 'cool stuff', at their heart, they are about 'more'. Buy more, consume more - and cheap. But most of the time we are falling for the desire for 'more' without stopping to think about how we're misled and what the consequences might be.

Furthermore, if I circle back to the desires of my youth - sex, drugs, food, and so on - they were all driven by a pursuit of "more." More pleasure, more experiences, more indulgence. It's not that these desires are inherently wrong - damn, I had a good time - but the unrestrained chasing of 'more' would have led to me to a pretty unfulfilled life.

I realize that life lies isn't about what the stuff I have or even the experiences I chase, but the ability to savor the moments I have with a sense of contentness. The idea of vairagya, as I've come to appreciate, is about a perspective shift. It gently urges me away from the insatiable hunger for 'more' and nudges me toward an inner richness, away from the external.

There's also kind of solace in vairagya that counters my fury at the constant barrage of advertisements and societal expectations that a life is better if it's cluttered with material crap and which doesn't necessarily equate to a meaningful life. As I reject mindless consumerism, I take a stand against the culture of 'more'. The temptation of quick and cheap solutions, epitomized by companies like TEMU, may seem appealing on the surface, but underneath it's the same - more, faster, cheaper. How can we find true purpose and contentment if we're always falling for this?

The journey from 'more' to 'enough' I realise is a personal one. It asks for self reflection and deliberate choices to embrace simplicity. It's about finding balance between enjoying the pleasures of life but not being enslaved by them.

Perhaps my first word was more, but the real journey is toward discovering the profound beauty and simplicity in 'enough'.

With Love,

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