Life: 10 x 10

Found this blogger mnmlist through his other blog, Zen Habits. Not only is his site layout itself perhaps the epitome of zen (well, just short of a single blank page with only a haiku and tasteful cherry blossom branch arrangement), but the minimalism reaches right down to his urls, which are free of the ever-cluttering and obnoxious-to-type “www.”

I like one of his more recent posts called “Learn to love less.” Now if you didn’t understand the context this would sound fairly grumpy, antisocial, maybe even heartless, but its not. As with another post on learning to eat less, its a reminder of a very powerful factor that we have to fight against in pursuing the kind of downsized lifestyle the four of us are blogging about: strong emotional bonds most of us have programed into certain physical stimuli. We so easily confuse need with want, and want with love. It’s better to care for more, right? To want more? Why would you want to love less? This holiday season we’ve just survived has highlighted these bonds for me with sizzling neon lights, it seems.

But first, flash back to August of this year, or even to an earlier post on this blog. I remember very heatedly venting to Andrew – perhaps as we sped down 101A at five in the morning to return our UHaul before the 7am limit we’d laughed at possibly exceeding – that I never in my capitalized LIFE wanted to receive another thing. No more knick-knacks or anything like stuff ever again. This year, I proclaimed through sleep deprivation and hunger pains, I would insist – sohelpmegod! – that birthday and Christmas presents could only be some sort of digestible and disappear-able good or money for an IRA or some such thing. No more! Nyet! Never again! Yo ho, yo ho, the tiny life for me!

And yet, fast-forward to this December: my mother demands a Christmas list. She says its to prevent her from getting me meaningless stuff – and she’s right! But why get someone “stuff” anyway? Is it an insult to say “no, I don’t want you to get me anything?” Is that worse than giving her a list with maybe only one thing on it? I did give her a list that was not unreasonable (I said “pick one or two” and even included a “just $ for an IRA” line!), but it certainly was not the kind of wishlist that I swore to in August. But no matter what kinds of lists my brother and I may have written, there was indeed a small Mountain of Stuff on Christmas morning – a younger cousin of the mountain we have sitting in a storage unit on route 13.

So – why need a Mountain? Even if people can talk about giving more meaningful presents or accumulating less clutter, they still panic – or something – and revert to the comforting habit of furnishing their loved ones with a Mountain. That aesthetic high of seeing all that glittering, glistening magic, of knowing that you’ve lavished your family with stuff always wins out. I know my house is not the only place this happens. I think that deep down most of us can’t shake that old conditioning, perhaps a relic of some kind of collective Manifest-Destiny/can-do/Americana/consumerist-push-for-moredammit! mentality, that giving less (regardless of the receiver’s receiving capabilities) is loving less, and “loving less” is heartless. Grinchy, even.

It’s like a chemical dependency. And during the holiday season its like dodging hordes of junkies, racing through the mall picking up every odd-looking flashlight or novelty-print deck of playing cards that will make them feel like they are satisfying their loved ones.* The fact is that this is better off done with actual love, but since we can’t always make a suitably tactile Mountain of that under the tree**, none of us, in our super-catologued, quantified, meme-listed and cyber-nourished modes of discourse, seems to believe that we already have satisfyingly-sized supplies aplenty. And so, onward with the weird flashlights and novelty bits!

Christmas is very much like super-floor-show time for a tendency that actually affects us year round, Christmas-celebrator or no: more is better, and if you have or give (or want or love) less, you’re inadequate. Will my family ever be able to handle giving one, single, meaningful, tasteful gift each? Can we stand only spending fifteen minutes unwrapping the entirety of our Christmas? I think so. Some day. Some glorious, minimalist day.

Now as for holiday eating… that’s perhaps for another decade.
~Angela

*Note: Names have been changed to protect the innocent. I did not actually receive a novelty flashlight or card deck of any sort this year
**You gutter-mind, you.