A good friend of mine recently said we were enemies because of my recent foray into minimalism. (This was a joke....I think).
He claims to be a maximalist.
What a great word! This seems (to me) to be the philosophy of keeping many things around you, that "more is more". The embrace of material possessions and the belief that happiness can come from them. A collector (ahem, hoarder!). I am not saying people who live lives of collecting more and more things are living the wrong way. It just doesn't follow my own beliefs.
Minimalism can be a challenging lifestyle to many, one that seemingly protests against the system that society has built of always chasing after the bigger house, the bigger TV, the better car, the bigger movie collection. But we don't have to choose this lifestyle. It works for some, and many are perfectly happy living with the desire for more things, more stuff. But I have found that it doesn't work for me. Instead, living with less brings me more personal joy and comfort in how I live my life. For me, "less is more".
Josh and Ryan from The Minimalists put it quite eloquently:
The things we collect become elements of us; our collections become part of our identities; a slice of who we are. But what happens when we take away our collections? Are we not the same beautiful people?
I like this quote from Fight Club:
Reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.
I am not against people getting things they want. We all have desires. We can't help it. But let us instead question why we want the things we want, ask ourselves if they really add value to our lives. A minimalist doesn't need to have less than 100 things to live a proper minimalist lifestyle (is there such a thing?). We just need to have things that truly matter to us.
So what matters to you?