Rejoicing in All You Don’t Need

Be aware that our culture is working against your desire to simplify your life. Purchasing new things has never been easier—as simple as clicking a button. And with increased opportunity for personal-data collection, corporations are ever more effective at knowing how to exploit our weaknesses.

Society hijacks our passion and directs it toward material things. But nobody gets to the end of life wishing they had bought more stuff. Why is that? Because consumption never fully delivers on its promise of fulfillment or happiness. Instead, it steals our freedom and results only in an unquenchable desire for more. It brings burden and regret. It distracts us from the things that do bring us joy. 

Now, resisting consumerism won’t give us happiness in itself. What matters is what we do with the freedom that minimalism creates for us. But we have to start somewhere. We need to realize that those who live in excess are not necessarily the ones who have the most fulfilled lives. Often it is those who live quietly, modestly, and contentedly with a simple life who are the happiest. Those are the choices we should be celebrating and the lives we should be emulating. Yet this definition of success is foreign to most of us. 

Admire success. But do not celebrate excess. Learning to know the difference will change your life. So will wising up to the strategies implemented with the sole purpose of convincing you to buy more than you need. 

This is the promise of minimalism: to rejoice at the sight of all the things we do not need. And to have our lives finally freed to pursue the things we want to do. I want you to have the same joy, to experience the same liberation. 

Achieving this liberation will require each of us to recognize and resist the consumeristic society in which we live. It will also require us to peer inward, to identify the vulnerabilities in our own natures. But it is well worth it.

How would you say consumerism affects you on a day-to-day basis? What is the most effective way you’ve found to resist consumerism on the Internet, in stores, and in conversations?