A Minimalist’s Christmas
When you want to give more by giving less
A few years ago, I saw some lovely little items that would have made terrific stocking gifts for some of my family members. Before I could even check the price, I thought, These will just be things for them to have to take care of. I left the store empty-handed.
My sons missed out on whatever I was considering for them, because I have embraced minimalism. I’m not talking about the mid-twentieth century art movement. The minimalism I’m interested in is the lifestyle, the one in which you live with less so you can spend your time doing something other than picking up after yourself. The number of blogs and websites dedicated to this subject make minimalism sound very modern, a philosophy of our time. Diogenes, however, who lived over 2,000 years ago, is sometimes described as a minimalist, though giving away your last bowl because you can drink water with your cupped hands is an extreme I don’t expect to match. The Buddha sounds as if he was pretty minimalist, too. In fact, prior to the Industrial Revolution most people were probably accidental minimalists. Few people had much money and there wasn’t a lot to buy with it, anyway. Christmas stocking purchases weren’t a big issue back then.
I don’t know about Diogenes, but I turned to minimalism out of laziness. I wanted to stop…
