If I won a million dollars, would it contribute to a minimalist life? Or would I simply fill up the percieved gaps of this materialistic existance with stuff?
It's hard being a blogger in the West on HIVE sometimes. You're conscious of your privelege, especially if you're socially mobile within the country you're in. When I talk about buying a house in Tasmania for a million dollars, this sounds exorbirant for someone who lives in India where $50,000 AUD might be the upper limit for a nice house - and from what I understand, the absolute upper limit when a house in a rural area might cost $693,063 AUD. In Malaysia, the average house price is $142,975.54 AUD.
So when I talk about a million bucks here in Australia, I'm conscious I sound very rich, very extravagant, or very stupid for taking out such a ridiculous mortgage.
However, with the national average wage of Australians being $90,000 for a full time salary and the median house price now being nearly a million dollars, being gifted a million bucks isn't exactly going to contribute to a life of excess.
When I was a kid, a million bucks meant diamonds and yachts.
Now we'd be lucky to buy that modest house by the sea we've been dreaming of for twenty years. And it's ever out of reach.
But if you're telling me you'll give me a cool million on top of that average house we bloody well deserve because we've worked hard for it? Well, perhaps we can talk about what holding onto minimalism looks like then.
Perhaps we can afford acres, not square metres. Perhaps we can have a permaculture off grid lifestyle acreage with water frontage on an island off the coast of Tasmania.
This doesn't mean garish, stuffing our house full of stuff. This means being able to afford a life of simplicity.
Because there is no way I want to contribute to filling the world with more things that we don't need. Everything we buy has a cost, you see. It's not just the price of the sofa, the dress, the car - it's the environmental cost that goes into their production, the exploited labour, the felled forests and displaced animals. Minimalism sometimes it's about you - it's about the world around you and how you tread upon it.
It's also about not living beyond ones means or working our fingers to the bone. A mimimalist attitude means more money in our pocket so we don't have to work. And if we don't have to work a job, perhaps we could create something special for future generations by stewarding the land in a sustainable way. That matters far more that diamonds and yachts.
Really, I've always been my happiest living in a bus or a truck, a caravan or a tent. A tiny home or a shed on some beautiful land would suit me just fine. I dream of the type of land we could buy for a million bucks.
To us, it's not the money in the bank that matters so much - it's the earth beneath our feet. It's the way the light catches in the water droplets that fly off a wave, the possums wide eyes in the moonlight, the plants pushing up from the soil. It's sitting with your loved ones by a fire, finding the feather of a yellow tailed cockatoo or a rare black snail, hiking to a distant waterfall or cheese and crackers off your thighs perched on the edge of a cliff drinking cheap wine.
Minimal stuff, more life.
Now if @millycf1976 means a million pounds, well, that's another story.
Perhaps then we'd buy the yacht.
This post was written in response to The Minimalist Community challenge, which you can find here. In the spirit of the challenge, I'm to invite two others to join in - I choose @traisto and @stortebeker, if they fancy (please don't feel obligated, but have fun if you do!)
All the photos are my own, edited on CANVA to include quotes from here. I also had fun making a gif - if you'd like to use it, feel free! I also have the still version if you want to use that.
With Love,
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