Cultivating a minimalist lifestyle, requires you to really look at what you need in life as opposed to what you want. This journey, really allows you to see how much we have been led astray, caught up in this materialistic world that has us in chains.
It is so liberating, to go on this journey, to finally understand, that what we need, is really the same as what we want. Everything else is a distraction, things to take you further away from what really matters. It is a return, to a more simpler life. Connecting with the food you eat, the water you drink and bathe in.
It is not just about owning less things, it is also about having less things to take up your time and less things to occupy your mind. Opening up space in your life to really explore what is important to you. To explore what really makes you feel alive.
For me, it is all about being outside, in the elements, bare feet on the ground. Living close to nature. Being around my children, as they learn and grow. Being involved with my local community, helping it to thrive.
So in actual fact, there is nothing minimal about my life really, especially when it comes to having an enriched life experience.
The more I let go of things in my life, the more experiences that came my way. It was as simple as that. We have somehow, ended up thinking that letting go, is too difficult. Especially because most of us value our lives, for the wrong reasons. But it is only difficult, if we allow it to be. Our mindset, is what really guides us in life and it can either hold us back or propel us forward.
The more we own, the more we become tied down. Tied down by our ideas, of what success means to us and those around us.
For me, going minimal meant letting go of any expectations that others had for me and just doing what made me happy. Because ultimately, those who love you, just want you to be happy.
I never really lived a life of excess, maybe a little in my twenties, when I was exploring squat parties in London. But that was a different type of excess, although excess all the same.
Itś like peeling back the layers, that have been placed upon you over the years, so that you can stand in the only layer you need, your skin and be really happy in it. To feel really connected with it, with the surroundings that you live in. Because everything is connected, all the paths in my life, that have led me to where I stand now.
Very comfortable, in this skin of mine. With the choices I have made. Recognizing that there is a rhythm to everything and allowing myself to fall into it. To be carried along by it. Everything will happen in itś own time.
So letting go and surrendering.
Whilst, also being able to defend you way of life. There are different ways in which you can live minimally and mind is very often frowned upon unfortunately. It is why I left Ireland, travelers, no matter what age they come from, are not really welcomed in many places. They see you in a moving home and already have an opinion of what you must be like. It`s really hard to communicate with people like that and believe me, I have tried.
I think I have always life a minimally, once I finished my studies and started working, I also began traveling and in the end, traveling won out over working. (working in the system, that is) I work everyday, but work that I chose to do, that I want to do.
That enables me and my girls to continue to live the way that we do.
Do I have any regrets?
No, I realized a few years back, how regrets can eat away at you and fill you with dis ease. Everything I have done in my life, has brought me to where I am now. Which at this very moment, is sitting behind a screen in my house truck, that is parked in the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the South of Spain.
Living the life that I chose for myself and reaping the rewards from it. Seeing the beauty that surrounds me and really appreciating it. Slowing down, so that life does not pass me by, because I am very much, a part of it.
