Nowadays it is easier to fall into the temptation of having, than to stop having. You have to have the willpower to refuse to buy what you don't need: we live exposed to an advertising bombardment in which the note is to consume, to buy, to have the latest on the market. That's why when we meet people who live happily with the essentials, we believe, in principle, that they are crazy.

For example the case of my friend Anibal and La Nena, a Colombian couple living on the Venezuelan coast. The first time I had the pleasure of visiting their house, I was really impressed: not only by how little there was between those lime-painted walls, but also by how happy they were.

I remember that my boyfriend and I had gone to spend a weekend at that house, on the recommendation of other friends who had told us about that place. They were the ones who warned us that there was no internet in the area, but they did not give us more details about the place.

So we were very surprised when we found a house with few things, most of them self-made and with marine materials. Only a few rooms had electricity and although that area is very hot, there was no air conditioning (we slept in rooms with large windows from where we could see and hear the sea). They also used sea water for almost everything they did. They had a very nice garden where they had everything and they bought the fish from a man who passed by daily, so they did not need a refrigerator.

Obviously, that can become a problem for those of us who are used to “certain comforts”: to live with certain things, that when we don't have them, we feel that we are missing a hand, for example.

I remember that living without Internet, without cell phones, without cold water to drink, without artificial ventilation, for two days was, at first, agony, then, at the end of the experience, I felt that everything is a matter of getting used to it. We get used to having certain things, which we think are fundamental to be able to live. And we don't.

When I saw that house I asked myself: “How can people live in the 21st century as if they were living in prehistoric times? They have nothing. They must be unhappy. Hahahaha. Nothing could be further from the truth. If there are happy people, it is Anibal and La Nena. They don't pay rent, they swim in the sea every day, they meet to talk every night and they are far from the nets. The laughter on their faces speaks of perfect happiness.

Our consumerist vision, makes us believe that we need many things and it turns out that those things can be even a burden in our existence. The more we have, the more we are not more, because it is the objects that possess us. When in order to be, we must have, then the value is not in us. Sometimes it is worth walking light like Anibal and La Nena.