Learning to live with only your barest possessions – Daily Express

Learning to live with only your barest possessions

Published on: Sunday, September 22, 2019

By: James Sarda

MANY people habitually or ambitiously crave for possessions, often ending up buying things they later realise they actually don’t need, hardly use or worse still – can actually do without and hence a waste of money.

Fumio Sasaki was one such creature who cluttered so many things in his Japanese apartment that he had space enough to only sleep.

That’s when he realised that he was surrounding himself with things that he doesn’t really need. 

­This included a collection of some 1,000 books and magazines.

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Thus began a life-transforming process of becoming a minimalist, partly inspired by a movement that started in the US in 2008.

Fumio started his quest to become a minimalist five years ago, when he realised that happiness was not about acquiring wealth or material possessions.

“Why people want material things or higher income is because they want to compare with others,” Fumio told an audience at the 37th Sharjah International Book Fair, recently.

“The more your income, the more material things you want to acquire. It is status that suddenly becomes important like even measuring it in terms of the number of followers on Twitter or how many likes you get in social media.

“It becomes endless,” said Fumio who finally even gave away his television but maintained a simple Mazda for ease of travel when he decided to move to the suburbs. 

“His motto became one of reducing his possessions to the absolute minimum, those that are truly important or cannot do without.

He also drew his inspiration from the examples of Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ, Mother Theresa and Mahatma Gandhi, all of who abandoned their comfortable lives for the sake of others.

Citing the co-relation between GDP growth and happiness in Japan, Fumio said it was clear that happiness had nothing to do with a nation’s economic performance.

He said happiness also does not cost money and one can find it in abundance by getting close to nature like the jungle, river or sea.

“Just like our ancestors did,” he said.

“Happiness can also be having sweet memories with someone, be it a friend or family,” adding one can still be happy without money, material things or status or what he calls the “three evils”.

“Sure we need money. I don’t deny it. But how much do you really need and you don’t need to waste on this and that or be bothered about something that won’t bring you real happiness.”

Having seen how being minimalist has changed his life, he then decided to write a book about it titled “Goodbye Things”. It became a hit in Japan and he quit his job as Editor of a publishing firm to do freelance.

Fumio said the idea of being minimalist is best achieved through self-realisation and cannot be forced.

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He suggests people start like how he did by throwing away expired food in the fridge.

He also switched his eating habits by changing his menu to the extent “that if people see my lunch box they will think I’m very poor”.

He acknowledged there are some minimalists who take it to the extreme like wearing the same clothes all year round.

“Start with something small. Reduce your belongings a little and you will feel the difference.

“Just by reducing goods will change your outlook on life. More important than reducing goods is changing your way of thinking. I stopped comparing myself to others and this was a big change to me.

“It gave me peace of mind.”

Fumio said traditional Japanese culture is also minimalist and cited the tea ceremony where there is no furniture and Japanese paintings or Haiku which is in only in black for its beauty.

“But most Japanese have forgotten this tradition and have become materialistic.”

The bachelor has his fair share of supporters and critics back home but admitted he had little success convincing his own family.

There’s another community in the Malaysian rainforest who have not heard about being minimalist but whose ways and practices denote nothing less.

In fact, indigenous rights advocate and BBC documentary producer Bruce Parry rates the Penans in Sarawak, in Malaysian Borneo as unlike many other indigenous groups that he has encountered.

Bruce said today’s materialistic consumer-driven society should learn how the pockets of ancient tribes that still exist in Asia and Africa how to go about their lives and change their consumption and lifestyle values accordingly.

“Here is a group of people who somehow are completely different,” he said as guest speaker at the event.

“They were living in a system where they had completely extinguished any outward expression of competition. They had no leaders, no chiefs…zero hierarchy.”

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The former Royal Marine and expedition leader said living among the Penans tested his own physical limits.

According to Bruce who documents these tribes for the BBC, the world is heading to a point where we forget to be mindful of others but only live for the moment and make the most of it.

“We are heading towards a future that will lose its balance to competition and aggression,” he said.

“Look at where we are going. We all want what our neighbour has. We are all fighting for resources. We are all trying to assert power and authority on others in whatever way possible,” he said.

Bruce warned that this has to change if this world is to sustain for future generations. That’s where learning from these tribals comes in, he said, adding that living among them taught him about our own survival and that of the planet.

“I got a deep insight into human nature when travelling the world and living among them.”

Bruce said they (Penans) and others he came across, was exactly how we lived until the advent of agriculture and the Neolithic revolution.

“I can’t think about my life (because)…competition is what earns my daily bread. We can learn from their experiences and way of life,” he said.

Bruce said humans accept popular narratives as a way of life which are the narratives of power, money or even religion which have the same effect on us as egalitarianism has on the Penans.

He praised NGOs for bringing the plight of the Penans to the world’s attention by being their voice, saying their habit of moving from place to place as shifting cultivators was to their disadvantage coupled with being displaced by logging and oil palm firms.