At first glance the word Minimalism might conjure up an image of vacant, sterile environments – those living spaces where you feel so uncomfortable because everything around you is so perfect and sitting on the clean white couch might wrinkle the impeccably placed scatter cushion. This was the association I used to have with the term. Minimalism meant straight lines, cold, clean, untouched, futuristic and white. Although this may be what some people love and what speaks to them, it put me off. And then I started looking a little closer.
This is not what it needs to mean. For every person their minimalist life will probably be completely unique form anybody else’s. It breaks down life to the essentials. This means that you need to really resonate with the objects around you to incorporate them into your life. The space around you can thus say more about you because the objects in it have been chosen for specific reasons.
Wabi-sabi | another view of Minimalism
Wabi-sabi is the Japanese aesthetic philosophy of finding beauty in imperfection, impermanence, and incompleteness. Nothing is finished, nothing is perfect and nothing is permanent. This is a very different view from the Western perspective of idealistic beauty.
Wabi-sabi is a perspective that is completely compatible with a minimalist view of the world. It is about being mindful about the beauty around you and finding the value in that which is temporary and unique. Even finding the beauty in yourself and your ’flaws’. This is how I wish to view everything around me in future.
This includes no more junk and no more dissonance. Life and the objects in it are temporary and if an item does not serve you, it may serve someone else. Surround yourself with that which brings you closer to yourself, your community and your environment.
Things don’t have to be stark and sterile. Your space can be warm, organic and natural. The key is simplicity and not stripping your life of meaning. Simplify and you open yourself up to noticing and valuing that which is truly meaningful to you and allowing that in as long as it serves you. If it does not do that anymore, let it go. It could add value to someone else’s life.
It is the difference between tending a garden and controlling it. Minimalism can bring you closer to the earth, it can make you tread lighter.
I love this thought. This is what we are striving for.
Jodi Hugo 