Minimalistic life

I read this article and it got me thinking that this problem of measuring ourselves by our wealth is not something new but it got worse with the internet and how many peers we have to compare ourselves with.

even the hyper curated minimalistic lives you see on social media today can’t possibly be real in practice because promoting that lifestyle online completely contradicts what it truly means to live simply, humbly, and content.

This rings true. I lost a big part of my attraction to social media after I left my hometown, I think being on a different place makes you realize that nobody cares about what you do and shouting from a public square what you're doing 24/7 only attract attention from people that are not even close to you anyways. I think that's one of the big problems of loneliness we have nowadays, we spend too little time with stuff that are on our arm reach but too much time getting updated about persons we might never see IRL.

no matter how high you climb, there’s always another peak in the distance.

The way I like to think about this is that life is like when you're on a treadmill and you look around and see everyone else is on their own treadmill, running harder and harder, yet no one talks about stepping off. But you can always step off, you can always stop, you can always slowdown for a moment. It's important to remember: when you die there's no score nor hall of fame.

the past two years in particular, i’ve felt myself craving moments that don’t make headlines, but rather, a formulation of a life worth living.

Having kids made me realize that life is in fact too short, and as an instict I really don't care much about spending my mental state on my close family. Even tho I work, and have other responsibilities around my day the only thing that really seems to bring some sense of achievement is spending time with my family. Time is the ultimate thing that money can't buy. That's what people mean when they say nobody ever wished they had more time to work on a dying bed.

there’s nothing wrong with wanting to grow, to create, to achieve—but ambition without reflection is where the trouble lies. without reflection, ambition becomes a trap, luring us into chasing things that don’t actually matter to us, leading us to live lives that aren’t truly our own.

I think the main difference is getting rich for the vanity of the status vs getting rich as a consequence of doing something that's useful to others. For me the main difference is the odds of feeling fulfilled by my actions alone.

fulfillment isn’t found in how much we accomplish or accumulate—it’s in the quiet, deliberate choice to live authentically.

Fulfillment is about the path not about the destination.

In general this text reminds me of the struggles presented to Arjuna on the Bhagavad Gita. In essense the text propagates the idea of living according to one's rightful actions or dharma, in contrast to getting lost on the vulgaries of life or avoiding all karma.

Also the idea of questioning how I should live my life really reminds me of Having and being had by Eula Biss, this is the book that most influenced me on how to see the adult life in a way that I'm not drowning in consumerism.