116. Everything That Remains: A Memoir by the Minimalists
Rating: ☆☆☆
Recommended by:
Authors: Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus
Genre: Memoir, Self-Improvement
234 pages, published December 23, 2013
Reading Format: Book
Summary
Well known for their website on minimalism, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus ask the reader to consider the question of what if everything you ever wanted isn’t what you actually want? On the corporate fast track in his late twenties, Millburn thought he had it all. A wife, an executive position with the promise of upward mobility, a large house filled with designer furniture and objects, and a late model car. After losing both his mother and his marriage in the same month, Millburn started questioning every aspect of the life he had built for himself, ditched almost all of his belongings and discovered a lifestyle known as minimalism. Everything That Remains tells the story of Millburn’s journey with commentary provided by his best friend and fellow minimalist Nicodemus.
Quotes
“The things you own end up owning you.”
“You can’t change the people around you, but you can change the people around you.”
“For me, minimalism has never been about deprivation. Rather, minimalism is about getting rid of life’s excess in favor of the essential.”
“We’re taught to work foolishly hard for a non-living entity, donating our most precious commodity—our time—for a paycheck.”
“A ROLEX WON’T GIVE YOU MORE TIME”
“Unless you contribute beyond yourself, your life will feel perpetually self-serving. It’s okay to operate in your own self-interest, but doing so exclusively creates an empty existence. A life without contribution is a life without meaning. The truth is that giving is living. We only feel truly alive when we are growing as individuals and contributing beyond ourselves. That’s what a real life is all about.”
“Now, before I spend money I ask myself one question: Is this worth my freedom? Like: Is this coffee worth two dollars of my freedom? Is this shirt worth thirty dollars of my freedom? Is this car worth thirty thousand dollars of my freedom? In other words, am I going to get more value from the thing I’m about to purchase, or am I going to get more value from my freedom?”
“The most important reason to live in the moment is nothing lasts forever. Enjoy the moment while it’s in front of you. Be present. Accept life for what it is: a finite span of time with infinite possibilities.”
“It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.”
“Truthfully, though, most organizing is nothing more than well-planned hoarding.”
“In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never feel you have enough. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, you will end up feeling like a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.” —David Foster Wallace, This Is Water”
“Success = Happiness + Constant Improvement”
“a career is one of the most dangerous things you can have if you want to find fulfillment.”
“Happiness, as far as we are concerned, is achieved through living a meaningful life, a life that is filled with passion and freedom, a life in which we can grow as individuals and contribute to other people in meaningful ways. Growth and contribution: those are the bedrocks of happiness. Not stuff. This may not sound sexy or marketable or sellable, but it’s the cold truth. Humans are happy if we are growing as individuals and if we are contributing beyond ourselves. Without growth, and without a deliberate effort to help others, we are just slaves to cultural expectations, ensnared by the trappings of money and power and status and perceived success.”
“When purchasing gifts becomes the focal point of the season, we lose focus on what’s truly important.”
“Go without. This option is almost taboo in our culture. It seems radical to many people. Why would I go without when I could just buy a new one? Often this option is the best option, though. When we go without, it forces us to question our stuff, it forces us to discover whether or not we need it—and sometimes we discover life without it is actually better than before.”
“People often avoid the truth for fear of destroying the illusions they’ve built.”
“When I had the opportunity to meet Leo Babauta four months ago during a trip to San Francisco, he said there were three things that significantly changed his life: establishing habits he enjoyed, simplifying his life, and living with no goals.”
“Ultimately most of us come to believe there’s more value in a paycheck—and all the stuff that paycheck can buy us—than there is in life itself.”
“After a series of promotions—store manager at twenty-two, regional manager at twenty-four, director at twenty-seven—I was a fast-track career man, a personage of sorts. If I worked really hard, and if everything happened exactly like it was supposed to, then I could be a vice president by thirty-two, a senior vice president by thirty-five or forty, and a C-level executive—CFO, COO, CEO—by forty-five or fifty, followed of course by the golden parachute. I’d have it made then! I’d just have to be miserable for a few more years, to drudge through the corporate politics and bureaucracy I knew so well. Just keep climbing and don’t look down. Misery, of course, encourages others to pull up a chair and stay a while. And so, five years ago, I convinced my best friend Ryan to join me on the ladder, even showed him the first rung. The ascent is exhilarating to rookies. They see limitless potential and endless possibilities, allured by the promise of bigger paychecks and sophisticated titles. What’s not to like? He too climbed the ladder, maneuvering each step with lapidary precision, becoming one of the top salespeople—and later, top sales managers—in the entire company.10 And now here we are, submerged in fluorescent light, young and ostensibly successful. A few years ago, a mentor of mine, a successful businessman named Karl, said to me, “You shouldn’t ask a man who earns twenty thousand dollars a year how to make a hundred thousand.” Perhaps this apothegm holds true for discontented men and happiness, as well. All these guys I emulate—the men I most want to be like, the VPs and executives—aren’t happy. In fact, they’re miserable. Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t bad people, but their careers have changed them, altered them physically and emotionally: they explode with anger over insignificant inconveniences; they are overweight and out of shape; they scowl with furrowed brows and complain constantly as if the world is conspiring against them, or they feign sham optimism which fools no one; they are on their second or third or fourth(!) marriages; and they almost all seem lonely. Utterly alone in a sea of yes-men and women. Don’t even get me started on their health issues. I’m talking serious health issues: obesity, gout, cancer, heart attacks, high blood pressure, you name it. These guys are plagued with every ailment associated with stress and anxiety. Some even wear it as a morbid badge of honor, as if it’s noble or courageous or something. A coworker, a good friend of mine on a similar trajectory, recently had his first heart attack—at age thirty. But I’m the exception, right?”
My Take
After taking and keeping a “no-buy” pledge last year (something everyone should try), I was interested in learning more about the concept and culture of minimalism. Everything that Remains fulfilled that desire. Millburn recounts his inspiring journey from an unhealthy, overweight, dissatisfied workaholic with a lot of stuff to a relaxed, content, fit person who enjoys and is fulfilled by the present. This book made me think about the wisdom of always acquiring more and better things and challenged me to be happy with what I have or, even better, with a lot less than what I have.
