@honeydue here.
@millycf1976 has been lovely enough to allow it.
@riverflows, a seasoned traveller. Let's tune in to hear more about her journey towards being an authentic and practising minimalist. Our guest for this week,
An inspiring adventurer with a great love of nature,
I’ve been thinking a lot about aparigraha - a kind of rule followed in Buddhism and Hinduism which came to me via a lifelong yoga practice started at 16. It’s the virtue of non possessiveness - basically, don’t be greedy. This is a needed tenet for a world where people profit off our desires and that reminds us that chasing after possessions and fame and holding so steadfast to belief systems isn’t what really makes us content, and risks harming ourselves and others in the pursuit of external goals.
This grasping is the root of all evil, yet it’s what the capitalist system which drives the entire world relies upon. Corrupt politicians, factory farming, child labour, human trafficking, class systems - it’s all linked to desire. The world is being screwed by our unwillingness to really think about why we want what we want and to be led by what profit mongering assholes tell us we want.
Buddha taught the practice of non-attachment as a way of dealing with these desires and aversions. Early on I thought this was about removing myself from joy and pleasure, a monkish life that keeps you separate from the world. Why would anyone want that?
But it’s really investigating the root cause of your unhappiness and suffering, which often take the form of either avoiding our fears and anxieties or clinging to things that make us feel better. Temporarily. Chasing followers on Tik Tok for approval, obsessive running to get thin, seeing ourselves as good based on our political leanings - we’re attached to our bodies, the approval of others, our beliefs. Because these things are always changing and are external to ourselves, it can lead to unhappiness. I think as you get older you start to realize that even more.
Minimalism to me thus has ancient philosophical, ethical roots. It’s more about a mental state. It asks us to constantly interact with our desires and aversions without getting obsessed by them or stuck on them. Nothing is permanent. Our bodies decay. Our beliefs can be shattered. We can lose our jobs, our houses, our children. If we don’t embrace that impermanence is the natural state of things, we’re bound to suffer far more than we perhaps need to. If we fully embrace the fluidity of life, we can move through it with greater ease and less anxiety about how things ‘should’ be.
At the risk of writing pages about this philosophy, I’ll just finish by saying how ‘minimalism’ is absolutely a philosophical practice that aligns beautifully for me with a life long interaction with concepts such as aparigraha and non-attachment. It feels like a personal and moral choice in a world that needs us to choose kindness, empathy, and other positive human values over greed.
And there can still be a lot of joy in that. I find joy in nature, or in a bit of cool tech like a camera that can help make art. You don’t have to stop consuming at all. You just have to be conscious about what you’re consuming and why that is, and if your choices are ethical ones. You end up with far more joy in living a present, mindful and aware life.
At the time, it was a risque, crazy thing to do. None of the friends we grew up with did this. People looked at us with a bit of wonder, envy and jealousy. It certainly wasn’t conventional. Damn, didn’t we feel clever, sleeping under a wheel of stars on the edge of the desert with waves smashing on deserted beaches? It meant something - the red dust in your toes, the endless horizons, the people you met on the road. It was of far more value than staying home and working in a cafe or going to uni like we were supposed to.
"Sometimes minimalism is about not living beyond your means - our Bedford bus life whilst saving for a house deposit"
That started a whole life of being happier on the road than in four walls. It’s no coincidence I met my husband when he lived in an old Bedford mobile library. He had 90 quid to his name and I thought - here’s a man who gets it. Of course, we wanted the dream too - a house in the countryside - but only insofar it’d give us a kind of freedom from society. Raising chickens, growing our own veggies, running off solar power - that was a shared dream. And yes, we both went to uni and became teachers. It enabled us to buy the things we found valuable, and to give back to society as well by investing in young people.
Of course, once you start, there’s a lot of other things to consider. For example, in Australia we have an involuntary superannuation fund that enables us to save for retirement. But we can choose where this money goes, eschewing the companies that invest in war, for example. I’m not going to buy shampoo that’s made by an Israeli company or eggs that aren’t free range because intense agriculture freaking bothers me a lot.
So the snowball is all the conscious choices about how you live.
And I still crave the open road - traveling in vehicles can remind you that you need very little to be happy. We’ve lived in a 60’s Bedford bus, a Bedford TK horse lorry, various old caravans, vans, and now Land Rovers. There’s not much we don’t know about minimal life on the road!
Maybe looking back on my life, the surprise is that I chose this so early in my life. I feel like patting younger me on the back. Well done, younger Riverflows.
I also find it interesting that a lot of people my age are practicing minimalism because they are looking ahead to the next twenty years and the fact they’re going to die. I’m not saying this in a maudlin, fatalistic, tragic sense - death is just something we need to embrace as a beautiful part of life. If we’ve hit 50 and we’re still madly clinging on to what people think of us, how much money we’ve got in the bank, and our possessions, we’re going to have a harder time letting go when the time comes. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to take my last breath feeling unencumbered, light, content.
Life on the road has its challenges.
Thinking about the global community, on the road in Portugal, I met a young German girl out surfing with me who spoke to me a lot about the forces she has on her to choose a career and have a particular life. She reminded me so much of me when I was that age. We spoke for a long time about what things in life were really important, on a heart level. I think she really loved talking to an older woman who had started exactly where she was and managed to still get an education and participate in society yet live alternatively as well. There’s a balance, we agreed. After a surf we sat in the back of the Land Rover and talked about what makes a happy life and how none of it has to do with your material wealth - it’s the richness of experience that matters. She loved the fact we were traveling this way. This girl gave me the biggest hug when we left.
I was inspired by my parents who always lived an ethical lifestyle. They were vegetarian from the ‘70’s because they hated the way animals were treated. They wanted me to get an education and have a good job but they also supported my passions. They’d vote for the political party that was going to benefit the country as a whole, not just them.
Their house is beautiful - it’s environmentally conscious, and every beautiful rug and piece of art means something, has beauty. Their garden invites birds and insects. Dad and I did a vipassana meditation course together once - when either of us ‘want’ for something we remind each other of Goenke-ji’s recorded dialogue where he says we are always ‘wanting, wanting, wanting’ and how that doesn’t bring us happiness.
Saying that, he worked hard for what he has and gets enjoyment from what he has, as they didn’t have it growing up. But he’s always says to me ‘you can’t take it with you’ whenever I’ve been hankering after something that is clearly causing me stress and anxiety.
It’s a lifelong practice. You don’t just downsize and be done with it. Sometimes you are just maintaining the size - no up or down, just making do with what you have and trying not to buy shit and reading labels and worrying about what company is behind it because you don’t want to supply arms to Israel or be responsible for rainforest destruction in the Amazon. Apigraha - non possessiveness - is also linked to ‘ahimsa’ - non violence, to yourself or others. Conscious consumerism, y’all.
Traveling in vehicles - like we just did in Europe with our vintage Land Rover - keeps reminding me that I’m happiest with what I can carry in a backpack or shove in the back of a vehicle. There’s a real sense of freedom with that.
@riverflows
I think a lot of young people are unhappy and they’re smarter than people give them credit for. They’re realizing they’re sold a lie they can’t actually chase - how can they possibly attain the same dream their parents did of owning a house? They’re resisting the narratives that most of us have been happily believing for the last fifty years - if you work hard enough, good things will happen. So what’s the alternative? If they’re not able to buy the Australian dream, where do they find value and purpose in their lives?
Look at young people ditching smartphones for ‘dumb’ phones, resisting their time being stolen. Look at how many of them are really concerned about the environment, and how this is reflected in their lifestyle choices such as slow fashion or zero waste shopping. They’re questioning, just like us, what is meaningful, what has value - both for themselves individually but also the entire planet.
Personally, I’ve never really cared what people think of my alternative living choices. It’s kinda funny how what people thought was weird or strange is now mainstream - they’re selling van life now rather than wanting to burn us at the stake for it. When I lived on a traveler’s site in a horse lorry in England, I never really told people at work about it because I knew how society felt about travelers. It was just too much of a hassle to have ‘those conversations’ to break down stigma and stereotypes. Now everyone’s got a van and is trying to find a piece of land to park their tiny home on. I never thought I’d see the day where this lifestyle would be commodified.
Back then, traveling Europe, he had a little Bananas in Pajamas backpack and as much Lego as he could carry. Lego, Mum approved of - it had value. We carried a plastic bag of food - crackers, tuna, queso fresco, hummus, tomatoes, cucumber - and a knife. We had 3,000 AUD to our name - that’s 1500 euro - and lasted eight months over ten countries. PEople thought I was mad or irresponsible or both. It was one of the best years of my life.
My kid never wanted for anything - he had a good education and we had family holidays to SE Asia. He had clothes on his back and was well fed. I always remember saying to him at 15 that he needed new trainers because the ones he had had holes in them. He refused because in his mind they were still functional. He’s never cared much for money. He’s a house husband and father doing some bar work and music production. Him and his partner would like a house, of course, but it doesn’t make them unhappy they might not ever afford one - they’ve just reassessed their values. They don’t live beyond their means. They know that happiness is not equated with possessions.
Go with what makes you truly happy, not what they - society, government, social media - tells you makes you happy. Get to the root cause of why you want or don’t want something, and teach your kids how to assess that and interact with their desires and aversions.
I honestly think the world depends on it.
Honestly, some of my favorite things are rocks and shells and fossils I’ve collected off beaches. They remind me of beautiful experiences and the wonder of nature, and often the vastness of time - I’m only a tiny gasp in the history of the universe and I’m good with that. I can’t give myself permanence through possessions. I’m going to be dust and sand and earth - that’s super cool. How lucky am I!
Honestly, there’s joy in having less. Don’t sweat it.
@riverflows for the inspiring words and for taking the time to share her journey with us.
