We have logos or slogans or cute catchphrases on our clothing, and it shows people who we are. We have tattoos or piercings, baseball caps, accessories, smartphones, designer bags, Manolo Blahnik shoes … and these express to others who we are.

In our homes, what we have on our walls shows others who we are. What TV shows we watch, what books we read, what celebrities and blogs we follow. What brands we like on Facebook. This is our identity.

But what happens when you strip all this away? When you are left with plain clothing, a home that is empty and spare … how will you express yourself? What will you use to forge an identity? You could argue that your identity would now be called “Minimalist”, but let’s go beyond that label.

In spareness, we are confronted by a lack. It is a frightening thing if you aren’t accustomed to it. You must take a close look at that lack, and wonder, “What am I left with?”

When there is just you, and nothing else, you must look inside yourself. You have to ask who you are, and again, that can be scary. You start to question whether you are adequate as a person, and then you wonder where this sense of inadequacy comes from. You start to realize that there is nothing more possible than who you already are, that there isn’t anyone who is “more adequate” than you, but only people who are different. If you perceive them to be “better”, that’s only because you are measuring them up to a standard created by someone else. When you remove that arbitrary and meaningless standard, there is no “better”. There is only who you are.

There is an empty room, and you. And you are enough. You are all that’s needed in this room, you fill it with your light and the miracle of your being, and you now realize: the things you used to express yourself, those were just a crutch. You need none of it. You are enough.

In spareness, you find enough.

Can you be a minimalist in NYC?

You can be a minimalist anywhere. All you need to do is reject consumerism, and learn to be content with little.

New York City seems to force people to have small apartments anyway, but many seem to try to cram years of shopping into the apartment. Instead, allow the constraint of space become a positive thing: have only the essentials, and empty these small spaces of clutter. Learn to make the most of a small space.

Shopping here is an art. But there are other arts to be pursued: the public library here is one of the most amazing tributes to learning I’ve ever seen, for example. The art of reading can be practically free. The art of listening, of being still, of being present with a friend, of walking aimlessly … these are all free.

Fashion seems at the forefront of the minds of many, but that’s all in the mind. I’ve walked around in second-hand jeans and simple T-shirts all day, and no one seems to care. Reject the conformist values, and force people to judge you on your talent, your voice, and your contributions, instead of your clothes.

You can be a minimalist anywhere, because it is a mindset. We are influenced by our environment, but we also create our environment, and we always have a choice. You can slow down, be content with little, and value doing and being over buying.

When I drink tea, there is only me, and the tea.

The rest of the world dissolves.

There are no worries about the future.

No dwelling on past mistakes.

Tea is simple: loose-leaf tea, hot pure water, a cup.

I inhale the scent, tinydelicate pieces of the tea floating above the cup.

I drink the tea, the essence of the leaves becoming a part of me.

I am informed by the tea, changed.

This is the act of life, in one puremoment, and in this act the truth of the world suddenly becomes revealed: all the complexity, pain, drama of life is a pretense, invented in our minds for no good purpose.

There is only the tea, and me, converging.

—
Thich Nhat Hanh: Tea Ceremony

It’s a Belgium beer brewed by monks who absolutely fascinate me. They brew the best beer in the world and yet seem to care nothing about business. As their beer has gained fame they refuse to raise production to meet demand. They refuse to market their beers and have no label on their bottles. They do no advertising and don’t allow interviews or tours of their brewery — you can visit a visitors’ center across the street but they don’t want to be bothered. You can only buy two cases at a time and you have to drive to their brewery to get it — and only after reserving via phone.

They are crazy dudes but I love them. They are not interested in making money or fame or accomplishments. They just want to be monks.

Father Abbott said on the occasion of the consecration of their new brewery “But we do not live ‘for’ our brewery. This must be strange for business people and difficult to understand that we do not exploit our commercial assets as much as we can.”

He went on to say “We are no brewers. We are monks. We brew beer to be able to afford being monks.”

I’m with him.

I am not a blogger. I am no author. I am a simple man who enjoys a simple life with his family. I write to be able to afford living that simple life.

What does it mean to focus on living? It’s a shift from caring about possessions and status and goals and beautiful things … to caring about actual life. Life includes: taking long walks, creating things, having conversations with friends, snuggling with my wife, playing with my kids, eating simple food, going outside and getting active.

That’s living. Not shopping, or watching TV, or eating loads of greasy and sweet food not for sustenance but pleasure, or being on the Internet, or ordering things online, or trying to get popular. Those things aren’t living – they’re consumerist pastimes that tend to get us caught up in overconsumption and mindlessness.

When I focus on living, all those other fake needs become less important. Why do I need television when I can go outside and explore, or get active, or take a walk with a friend? Why do I need to shop when I already have everything I need – I can spend time with someone or create, and I need very little to do that.

These things I do now — they require almost nothing. I can live, and need little.

And needing little but getting lots of satisfaction … that’s immensely rewarding. It’s an economy of resources that I’ve never experienced before.

These days, I need nothing but my loved ones, a text editor, a way to post what I create, a good book, simple plant-based food, a few clothes for warmth, and the outdoors.

Advertising is highly effective — we might not realize it, but it works on our subconscious so that we want to buy things. It plants desires in our minds, and creates a mindset that, whatever our problem, buying something is the solution. It creates the mindset that buying is the norm, and there’s no other choice.

And it’s everywhere. Watch TV, advertising screams at you all day long. Read a newspaper or magazine, go to a website, and it’s in every crevice. It’s on our Facebook and Twitter pages, in our email, on billboards, on buses, in sports events, in public outdoor spaces, on people’s clothing, in 5K races, on blimps in the sky, in podcasts, in iTunes, before a movie starts, subtly (or not so subtly) placed products inside of movies … everywhere. On websites, it’s seen as inevitable, and a site without ads is almost unheard of (very different from the web of 15 years ago, when ads were rare).

But it doesn’t have to be a fact of life, having advertising everywhere. More and more, the future seems to hold more invasive advertising, more personalized so that it will target our minds more effectively (probably streaming directly into our retinas or frontal cortex). But it hasn’t always been like this, and we can decide not to participate in this.

Just a century ago, advertising wasn’t nearly so intrusive. A century before that, it didn’t really exist (at least not the way we normally recognize it). Sure, there have always been people calling out their wares, but it’s become a whole different order of magnitude — many many orders.

We don’t have to submit. There are other ways of doing things. We don’t have to let corporations control our minds and our lives.

What’s the alternative? First, we must get out of the consumerist mindset — think about what’s really essential, rather than needing to buy all the time. Second, we must imagine other possibilities. It’s hard to do that when we’ve been trained to think in terms of buying and selling, in terms of commerce instead of people. Yes, we need to make a living, but making a living doesn’t mean selling — it means living. We’ve forgotten that, and it’s time to start remembering.

Ah, true. Except that it’s not true: having more money isn’t better. Having less money means you’re forced to make a choice: is it better to have a lot of bills and not make ends meet, or go into debt … or is it better to cut back on bills?

Fewer bills is better, in my experience. It means less stress, less hassle to pay bills, less work required to pay them, more savings, simplicity.

It means having less in your life, but that’s not a bad thing. Less in your life means finding creative ways to be happy.

Some examples:

• Cable TV: cutting this bill means you can read books or go outside or play board games.
• Credit card: Eliminating credit means you only buy things when you absolutely need them and have the money.
• Auto: getting rid of your car means finding alternate transportation — walking and cycling are much healthier, and much cheaper. You also cut out the gas bill, insurance, auto maintenance and repairs, cleaning costs, registration fees, parking fees, toll fees and more.
• Restaurants: eating out less means cooking more, which can mean fresh food cooked simply and healthily.
• Coffee: cutting out on drinking mochas and cappuccinos means drinking water or home-made coffee or tea, which is healthier and cheaper.
• Heating/cooling: you might not be able to kill this bill, but you can cut back by heating or cooling small spaces instead of the whole house, or dressing warmer.
• Power: cut back on electricity use, unplug things when you don’t use them.
• Mortgage: sell the house, rent a smaller place, get rid of most of your possessions so you don’t need so much space. You’ll also cut out homeowners taxes, fees, maintenance costs, and more.
• Phone: cut out the landline or the cell phone. You also might not need a data plan.
• Gym: workout at home or outside for free.
• Magazines/newspapers: info is available online. Read books from the library instead.
• Trips/vacations: have fun near your home.
• Housecleaning/yardwork/landscaping: Do it yourself if you currently pay someone, and get healthier doing it.
• Daycare/private schools: Public schools can be great, homeschooling is free if you can manage it.
• Movies/DVDs: Be selective, and find free forms of entertainment instead.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Cutting back on bills means being creative, but it also means a simpler, healthier life in many cases.

We want to lose weight, we buy weight loss books, workout equipment, diet pills, nutritional supplements, a fitness program. We sign up for the gym or a class or a trainer.

We want to travel, we buy a suitcase, a travel pillow, the perfect carry-on luggage, maybe even special clothes or equipment for traveling.

We want to start meditating, we might get a meditation pillow, or sign up for a class, or buy a book, or get a timer, or get the perfect meditation clothes.

You get the picture — any new endeavor might not only require the new clothes that Thoreau warned us about, but new equipment, books, DVDs, gadgets, software.

But adding these things to our lives brings problems, not just solutions: they’re often added expenses, sometimes adding to our debt or financial problems; they’re more clutter in an already cluttered life; they must be dealt with and tracked and maintained and stored; they each extract a high environmental cost; it takes transportation to acquire the new things; and so on.

And often, these new things bring problems without being the solutions we desired.

Another thing to consider, rather than adding, is subtracting.

If you think you need a new notebook in order to write, maybe the problem isn’t your lack of a notebook, but your desire for a nice new one. Subtract the desire, and you can write without acquiring.

If you want a new iPhone (as I often find myself doing), consider whether this is a true need, or just a desire that can be eliminated. If you want new workout equipment, consider whether you can work out without any equipment.

An empty room (or the outdoors) contains all you need, other than food and water and basic clothing. In an empty room, you can meditate, sleep, pray, think, compose, do a workout, talk with a friend.

What you already have beyond an empty room — books or access to a library, a computer or access to one at a library, pens, maybe some paper, and all the other possessions in your life — are way, way more than you need.

When you subtract the desire, you can subtract possessions, and leave your mind, heart, and life free. Then the possibilities are endless.

We’re in a new city, a blank slate for us, and we’re allowed to reimagine our lives. That’s a scary thing, because as humans we cling to the familiar, find comfort in routines and in what we’re used to. We can handle change, but usually in smaller bits. Drastic changes, at the scale of everything we know, are difficult to handle.

It’s also a wonderful thing, because a fresh start means you have nothing tying you down, nothing stopping you from creating the life you want.

It’s painful, in that we left behind the people we love the most. It was like tearing off a limb, except that you can live without a limb … living without these loved ones isn’t so easy. I don’t recommend it to anyone else, but I also know that we will grow as people because of this experience, and become stronger for it.

We’ve gone car-free, which is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. It’s almost impossible to do on Guam, for many reasons, though we did manage to go car-lite while we were there. Today, we walk and take transit everywhere, and it’s easy. We plan to get bikes soon.

We purposely moved to a spot that’s near everything we need: groceries, a library, bookstores, restaurants, hardware store, bakeries, lovely parks, buses and trains. We could have lived cheaper or nicer if we were further away from everything, but we chose to be in a denser area, more walkable.

We are buying most of what we eat at farmer’s markets and in bulk bins, to reduce packaging and processed foods, both better for our health and the environment. We’re still working on this, but already it’s been a dramatic improvement.

We run in parks, sprint up hills, walk everywhere, eat fairly healthy, do bodyweight exercises whenever and wherever we feel like it, play in grass fields. We’re getting healthier and fitter than ever before, and we love it.

We have very little. And that’s perfect.

It’s a fresh start. We’ve only begun to imagine the possibilities. It’s not home yet, but we’re going to make it the home we create.

Advertisers have studied the mechanisms of human desire, and have perfected the craft of making us want things. Children watching a cartoon, for example, will eat more snacks if there are ads for food during the cartoon (it doesn’t matter what kind of food), as opposed to ads for other products. People who see the iPad can’t control their desire to buy one, because they’re so cool! Cars, houses, clothes, gadgets, food, travel, you name it, we have been trained to want them by advertising.

How does a human being, or a society for that matter, fight such desires? It’s pretty damn hard. Try walking through an Apple store, or walking by the food court with its smells of fresh pizzas or cinnamon buns, or watching television, without desiring. Some people can control themselves, or have trained themselves to associate these things with negative thoughts (fattening, greasy, plastic, superficial, etc.), but most of us aren’t that disciplined.

The answer is that, just as the desires have been manufactured carefully and with much effort, we must manufacture content. In ourselves, and in society.

How would we do that? I’d start by removing yourself from places where advertising is so pervasive: TV, magazines, malls. Find ad-free content, or at least minimal advertising: public radio, or ad-less blogs, etc. Find ways to spend your time without having to go to the mall. Avoid shopping websites. But even beyond that, I think we can reach others to show them how to be content.

Manufacturing content means developing a strong, consistent message … something along the lines of “You already have enough”. Or better — I can’t say I have the answers here. We would want to reach people who are about to give in to their desires, perhaps on television or in the malls or on the Internet. We’d need a campaign that would drive this message home, and educate people about the dangers of manufactured desire, and show people how to find contentedness.

Imagine a big white billboard in Times Square with the simple message: “You already have enough.”

Imagine that we bought ads on Amazon, that appeared before people bought something: “You don’t need that, my friend.” OK, so Amazon would never allow an ad like that on their site, but you get the idea.

Imagine that credit cards came with the message “You don’t want debt” printed on them.

Imagine an iPhone operating system that detected when you’re about to go shopping on a website, and told you, “Be content with what you have. Let go of desire.”

Imagine if McDonald’s drive-thrus were lined with billboards that read, “Don’t be a glutton. Eat less, eat sustainably. Don’t supersize, simplify.”

Imagine if children were taught not that they need to go buy the latest Disney toys, or video game system, but to enjoy nature, to live life simply and fully.

Contentedness comes naturally, in the absence of manufactured desire. But getting back to that natural state might take some work.

With apologies to Noam Chomsky.