Fast forward to two nights ago and my trying to find something interesting to watch during my almost nightly routine of laundry folding. I decided to make an attempt at watching my first documentary, with the thought that if it were horrible I could always switch back to my routine go-to's of watching Gilmore Girls, Star Trek, or Fixer Upper for the umpteenth time.
I happened across the Minimalism Documentary on Netflix, thinking that it would help inspire me for the decluttering projects I have planned for the New Year, (anyone else cleaning out house for the New Year?). I have found the premise of Minimalism interesting for some time now and the prospect of having less to clean up is greatly appealing.
The documentary itself is a bit dry, so I haven't finished it yet, hopefully that will happen during tonights laundry folding. Although it maybe that I find it dry because that is normal for documentaries, I have nothing to base that thought on though.
What I did find while watching Minimalism was that the thought of minimializing the stuff in our lives can go far beyond physical objects. Again and again, the various people in the documentary state that minimalism is about weeding out the things in our lives by only keeping that which adds value to our lives. The idea being that we only keep that which adds value to our lives and discard that which deprives or detracts our lives of value. This premise means not getting rid of stuff just for the sake of having less, but getting rid of things that do not help our lives to grow to the full potential that we would like them to have and experience.
I began to realize that this thought of minimizing that which detracts value from our lives can also be applied to the relationships and activities of our lives. For a very long time I have been in the process of evaluating the "WHY" behind certain thoughts, ideas, and things in my life. Do I want that object, relationship, or to participate in that activity solely because I have been told that I should want it? Are my ideas for an ideal home, possessions, relationships, or appearance based upon things that I truly like? Or, instead, are theses areas based upon advertising telling me what I should and should not like? And if these things are based upon external sources, what do I truly like?
The idea of focusing on things that add value to our lives isn't something new, yet we are bombarded with advertising designed to warp our ideas of what is useful, necessary, needed, or wanted. Every piece of marketing is designed for the sole purpose of making us believe that we NEED whatever is being advertised. Additionally, we are now faced with Social Media attempting to advertise and dictate to us what our ideas, opinions, relationships, and friendships should look like or be like. None of it actually taking into account the wellbeing of the audience.
I found this train of thought tying in with my last blog post about boundaries and mental health. How often do we NOT draw boundaries because we have been told that we should not have boundaries in that area of our lives or that boundaries are bad? We witness similar relationships through the lens of Social Media and assume that is what our relationship should be like as well. We even go so far as attempting to replicate relationships we see in tv or movies, good or bad. In attempting to copy what we see or assume should be are we actually doing more damage to ourselves or short changing our own wellbeing?
I am not necessarily advocating the dismissal of relationships. We already saw too much of that just from the politics and opinions surrounding the last election and are now learning to live with the fallout of those presumptuous burning of bridges. Instead, I would suggest evaluating the relationships we allow free reign in our lives and the demands we allow to be placed upon us. Perhaps in the process of cleaning, decluttering, and New Years resolutions we include an evaluation of our own boundaries and wellbeing. Maybe in the process of cleaning up our homes we evaluate if and how we should clean up our relationships and lives.
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