Minimalism ˣ Materialism
The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls. When he found one priceless pearl, he went and sold everything he had and bought it.
Today, Black Friday sales will surpass $12 billion dollars online this. A billion dollars isn’t cool anymore Zuck. You know what is? $12 billion.
I’m not anti-materialism really. I think a healthy case can be made for valuing things. A pair of expensive leather shoes can be re-soled and polished and last for decades. While a pair of cheap Yeezys will only last as long as the rubber sole.
Is there anything in the world that you would be willing to sell everything you had just to own? Imagine finding something so valuable, so precious, that you sold your house, clothes, jewelry, bedding, cars, and TV. Then you take all the funds you have and dump it all in one big purchase.
Then once you had that thing, you didn’t bore of it. You woke up every day and went to where it was just to gaze at it, polish it, care for it, use it. This one thing had re-centered your life so that everyone who knew you knew that you had found something of vast worth.
Or are you like me, surrounding yourself with lots of cheap plastic? Insulating your soul against the yearning to possess something truly extraordinary? If you downsized your life, moving into the smallest space you could, kept only the things you absolutely needed, what might you discover?
This past week, I was de-cluttering my room and I discovered an old USB stick with 2,000 family photos that I had never seen before. And not just pictures of me, but pictures of my parents, pictures that helped tell the story of my family. I would never have seen them if I hadn’t been squeezed into a Manhattan 3-bedroom apartment.
What do you think, was it worth it?
