Minimizing Your Self

Irfan Yang
Sep 7, 2018 · 3 min read

On the spiritual aspects of Minimizing

Back in 1996, a game company called Hueforest entertainment which was started by Frank and Susan Wimmer, released a game that they specifically founded the company for.

That one game in question was Amber: Journeys Beyond; a short ghost hunting adventure along the same point-and-click vein of Myst, during the short-lived era of highbrow entertainment in the later 90's, when Windows 95 and Macintosh were taking off.

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The game isn’t that great in comparison to now; an unseen character in a big old haunted house level; it’s more of something to pass the time than anything.

The point is, while this doesn’t hold a candle to modern triple A titles, this game still holds a lot of memories — for me, anyway.

How does a dusty PC point-and-click still hold value for those like me who played it?

Perhaps we’ve been so inundated by ever-evolving entertainment that we forget the simpler things can still bring us joy these days.

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The Bare Bones Of Fulfillment

Minimizing is a lot to do with that — deciding what you absolutely need for your happiness. And sometimes it’s nothing to do with the latest or best.

After throwing away the majority of my stuff, I was worried at first about dealing with the sudden vacuum of where stuff used to be; yet I forged on with the goal of decluttering.

In the following weeks, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I missed not a single item, even the ones that I thought I would miss.

We assume that we need ever more to keep ourselves entertained or satisfied nowadays, when all we really needed was that which introduced us to that feeling in the first place.

When we realize that even our obsession for happiness can be chiseled away, that happiness itself comes along naturally.

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And that is what Minimalism’s true goal should be.

I wrote before that the ideal Minimalist understands what the most valuable commodity is.

As a Millennial, I grew up in the age when both the internet and modern consumerism was burgeoning.

We’ve come far and fast into an era where you can purchase whatever you want now, on a handheld device — while paying for it with that device, even.

Yet, can it be said we are happier? Or just more distracted?

We strove for a “promised land” yet people are more depressed than ever; all those trappings take us away from the silence but do nothing to absolve us from it.

These times are the zenith of our need for consumption, and we now know it does not help.

Perhaps it’s time to see if going in the opposite direction holds any answers.

I believe that’s the lesson of games like Amber; you don’t need much to make yourself happy, even in our age of neon lights.

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