00045: A New Awakening!

27 days, twenty-seven items

I’m getting closer to the end of my 30-day Minimalism Game/Challenge. And the more I continue to clean, the more stuff I find that was once useful but now can be removed from my life. Because of the pandemic, most of the stuff I am trying to donate is being kept in the garage. I don’t really feel I’m getting rid of stuff yet. The advantage is that it has been put away is “go away boxes,” an idea and advice that came from my good neighbor. The boxes are ready to go. And I wish they could just go now but the pandemic has everyone’s lives on hold. It’s our new normal.

Here’s something interesting that is happening to my psyche. I was at the store yesterday and I noticed all the stuff they have in display for us to buy. It has always been there and I have always found it cute and a “good addition” to my household. Yet, yesterday, the moment I notice all the merchandise, I simply said to myself, “Wow, look at all these unnecessary crap. It really serves no purpose at all. It simply takes space in the house simply for the fact that is it is cute.” I also noticed that every time I looked at a surface with stuff on it, I wonder how that surface could look better with “less stuff.” And the last thing I noticed was that when I saw a pile of stuff in the middle of the store, as part of the “inviting arrangement for people to buy stuff,” I thought it looked busy, unappealing, and it should just be thrown away.

I never cared how a store looked and how the store displayed its merchandise for costumers, but yesterday’s experience at the store was illuminating to me. I’m not saying the store did anything wrong with its displays, I’m saying that I’m noticing how stuff is arrange, re-arrange, and display in order for people to buy it.

The trailer for “The Minimalist: Less is Now” starts with the words “stuff.” It says, “Stuff! Stuff! The accumulation of stuff. Stuff is contributing to our discontent in so many different ways. We never really stop to question, ‘What is essential? What is necessary? How much of this stuff is actually adding any value to my life?'” Those introductory words have never meant so much to me as they do now. I personally think that my mind, because of the 30-day Minimalism Game I’m doing, is starting to be rewired, starting to see surroundings in a different way, to be aware of the amount of stuff that we accumulate, and conscious about how useless stuff is being pushed into our lives by corporations.

It did not take me long to write this entry for day 27 of my challenge but to think about what I’m writing, it took me the whole day after I came back from the store, and also part of night because I even dreamt about it. I think I’m up to something with this “decluttering” process, and my brain is starting to digest the information in a way that is also forcing me to be aware of my environment and allowing me to see how “stuff” is interfering with my surroundings. Me likes this awareness. It makes me smile. And I feel it is adding value to my life in an unexpected way. #carlosmanuelspeaksthetruth