Let it go NOW

If there is any money left when I die, it's strictly mismanagement on my part.-Tony Jeffries

We have too much stuff in our homes. 90% of it is not used or looked at 90% of the time. Why are we still hanging on to it?

Life is passing us by, very quickly. And our stuff is tying us down. Let go of the ballast.

If we intend to leave our stuff up to our descendents when we die, what is wrong with giving it away while we are still alive? For all you know, what you treasure now may be trash to them.

Give things away while you still have the chance.

time is all you want and need

Time in the wild reminds me how much of what I ordinarily do is mere dithering, how much of what I own is mere encumbrance. The opposite of simplicity, as I understand it, is not complexity but clutter. - Scott Sander

My friend currently working at Flextronics will be out of work come April. My wife’s cousins who worked at Toshiba and NEC have been laid off much earlier. Notice they are all in the electronics industry.

We are experiencing the rippling effects of the economic turmoil, but at least we learn something – when money is tight, people don’t see electrical or electronic gadgets as essentials in life.

It makes us think about the stuff (electronic or otherwise) we have in our homes and whether it really makes us happy. Happy for a moment, maybe. But content? I don’t think so. We always seem to want more. In the end, we end up working for the rest of our lives to pay for the stuff we thought would make us happy.

I made so many mistakes in my life. Although mostly financial (spending on non-essentials), they led to many bad outcomes on relationship, friendship etc, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually etc.

Not to sound morbid, but on our deathbed, I bet we wouldn’t be worrying about that IKEA sofa bed on discount, the 42” flatscreen TV on offer, the PlayStation and the Guitar Hero game combo, the iPhone our friends bought, or the Proton Exora people are recommending.

On our deathbed, we wouldn’t be worrying about the holes in our socks, or the crack in our windshield.

On our deathbed, we wouldn’t be wondering if our office colleague was a B-cup or a C-cup bra size. (Well, ok, that’s just me when I am really alive and kicking. But I’m kicking the habit! Cut me some slack, will ya?)

On our deathbed, we would instead be thinking, “How I wish I had spend more time with/on…”

The keyword is “time”. Time with our family. Time with friends. Time with nature. Time with oneself.

They say time is money. That’s not true. Time is more valuable than money. Time makes us happy. We never even realized that. And time is free.

Less Tool; More Work

The greatest wealth is to live content with little. - Plato

Men never talk about wardrobe, but I’m willing to make an exception. I have downsized my wardrobe and intend to keep things minimal. My professional outfit collection now consists of:

Four work shirts, for the five-day work week. Yes, one gets worn twice in the same week.
Two black pants, one I keep in the office, the other at home
One black neck tie. I gave away all the other neck ties.
One black jacket, which I keep in the office for business meets
One batik shirt, for batik-required functions
One black baju Melayu suit, for national functions
Two black pairs of shoes, the good pair in the office, the slightly holey at home

So those are my professional outfit. I say “professional”, because these are just tools for the job. When I retire, these are quite useless.

I don’t wear jewelry, not even a ring. I don’t wear a watch anymore since my Breitling broke. I don’t wear belts, and I definitely don’t accessorize myself with cufflinks or tie-pins.

As for my wife, I’m imagining her ideal wardrobe would be:

Five blouses
Three pants
One pair of sandal
One pair of shoes
Two, maybe three baju kurungs for special occasions
At least 30 pieces of lingerie

Well, the last item I admit is quite a lot, but lingerie involves very little fabric.

Downsize

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts, of life are not only dispensable, but hindrances to the elevation of mankind. - Henry David Thoreau


From downshifting to downsizing. It turns out, my unused helmet and entire miniature car collection weren’t the only things I got rid of.

I held a garage sale and sold some CDs, VCDs, DVDs, VHS tapes (yikes, I had been keeping them even though my VCR was broken), books, magazines (a lot of them. Really, let’s just say, you could make a 1:18 scale of the Petronas Twin Tower out of my mags), toys, artworks, a bit of furniture, Home Theatre satellite speakers (still in box!), cables and wires (they were in my tool drawer doing nothing), music sheets, wall plugs and screws (which I bought a bag full at IKEA and only used a pair – talk about a waste of resources!), t-shirts (which I got every time I attended seminars or workshops, and which of course, I wore only once) and some knick knacks.

The ones I could not sell, I gave it away. Yeah, that’s right, buyers should’ve waited until I thought I couldn’t sell.

But what does all this downsizing come to? Realization. All this while we’ve been hanging on to our stuff because we are clinging on to memories – of a person, of a place, of an experience. But once we let the clutter go, we are no longer tied to the past. We can now look forward to the future, while focusing on the present. We begin to realize what is essential, and what is not in our life.

Funny thing is, I never miss any of the stuff I got rid of, which means they were not essentials. I never needed them. Why I bought them in the first place is beyond me. Why I kept them in the house under lock and keys is really disturbing.

Downshift

You are probably already happy and just don't know it. - Dave Waxler



If there’s one thing cycling to work has taught me, it is about slowing down and enjoying simplicity.

I am no longer one in the rat race rushing through traffic to climb the corporate ladder so that I could label myself as successful and be happy.

But I can be happy even if I am not at the top of the ladder. In fact, I bet I am happier than most people at the top.

As a result of downshifting, I don’t overwork anymore. I let the Joneses keep up among themselves. My time, my health is more important.

The ladder is so high, and if only we could downshift a little, we could take pleasure from the free and beautiful things in life – the sun, the rain, the rocks, the mud, the hills, the streams, the birds, the butterflies…the list is never-ending.

The need to unwant

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn. - Henry David Thoreau

Last year I sold my full face go kart helmet, which I had been keeping even though I had stopped racing for so many years. Before I sold it, I asked myself why it was so difficult to make myself part with it. I knew I would not be racing again. I knew my children wouldn’t wear it even if they share the same passion – no, not with that smell and outdated styling.

So why did I keep it? Must be for sentimental reasons. I think I know why. I was holding on to this image of whom I thought I was. I wanted my children to know that their father had passion for car racing and the helmet was the proof. I wanted to remind myself how wonderful track driving was and the helmet was the reminder. But the helmet was sitting there occupying space and never made me happy since I last wore it. In fact, it hurt me more that I had to store it, and checked on it every now and then to ensure it didn’t turn into animal bedding. It was costing me space, time, money and energy – physically and mentally. Trust me, it wasn’t sentimental. It was hypocrisy.

I decided it was time to let go. Not just the helmet, but the fake image that came with it. The pretentious me, myself, I.

I even sold, giveaway and donate my miniature cars that I passionately collected, because the longer I kept them, the more I wanted to collect. And unfulfilled wants would only make you depressed.

I let go some books as well, because they were not read. I never had pleasure reading them, and keeping them would only bring out the fake image of a well-versed intelligent person – as if I wanted to show off when visitors came by.

After all the letting go, I began to understand that those things that I thought I owned actually owned me. I now live with minimal possession and clutter. I am liberated. I am happier. Happy that I am slowly disowned by my stuff. Happy that I am killing all images that I was trying to build of myself. Happy that I discovered a new need – the need to annihilate the self to be selfless.

The Want That Got Away

We fill the hands and nurseries of our children with all manner of dolls, drums and horses, withdrawing their eyes from the plain face and...Nature, the sun and moon, the animals, the water and stones which should be their toys. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

My daughter Hannah got 100% for two papers in her exam last week. My wife and I were willing to reward her for her achievement, but we could not decide what to buy her. Hannah could not tell what she needed or what she wanted either.

Isn’t that nice? To have no knowledge of what we want? And therefore, no desire. Every material thing will seem insignificant. It would then be easier to get rid of stuff that we have been keeping and to drop the idea to buy more stuff – stuff that we thought we want.

Yes, the cliché advice is that we need to distinguish between our needs and wants, so that we budget better and contribute better to the development of our own family and the community. But it’s easier said than done, because unfortunately, there’s a fine line between need and want. A very fine line. Most of the time, we want a thing so bad we rationalize that we need it.

A wise man used to pray, “Lord, protect me from what I want”.

I used to have a similar wish – “I want nothing”. Or, “I want not to want”.

Then again, wanting nothing or wanting not to want is still a want. Tough shit!