Stripping Down Needless Frills

Hanging loose is tricky business, yet nevertheless imperative if one is to live a meaningful, truly content life. Taking a page from my recent chat with @mrprofessor, I'm thinking today about something he terms "social minimalism". Not for nothing, but Barcelona's ample second-hand or "vintage clothes" market is giving my other minimalist ideas a serious run for their money.

I've never been able to do loud. I don't like parties. I don't like loud gatherings, drugs, all that hazy bullshit that commonly passes for "fun". It's not for me, and it wouldn't be genuine if I tried. So I've always adhered to a strict minimalist practice when it comes to my friends. Less is more, both in quantity and interaction. I'll take a few quality hours spent genuinely engaging over meaningless shopping or "hanging" any day. I find great value in one-on-one. In intimacy, in getting to really know a person.

When I was younger, I worried that made me desperately unfun. I'd always get flustered when meeting someone new, as I worried my simple social life would be written off as dull. Now, I'm at a point where I write the people who do that off as dull, and remove them from my limited air space.

It's a small step, but a first step towards a change I've been needing. For me, the area of my life where I need most change is the social aspect. While I've always had a knack for getting along with most people, I have a hard time making friends. Or rather, I'm struggling a bit towards finding "my people".

When I was young, I thought such connections would come easily, naturally, as long as you were doing everything else right. Now, I worry they're rare, easy to miss, difficult to find. While I have enough friendships not to feel alone, I'm starting to doubt their quality. While I enjoy them, I'm starting to sense myself and these people growing apart.

Minimalism is only one of many points on which we don't see eye-to-eye.

I'm finding it hard to stay friends with people who need a lot of frills to be content, and I see some of my closest people slipping towards that.

It's equally hard maintaining a relationship with people who seem to be turning more towards an urban, mainstream life when I sense myself slipping more and more away from it.

The clearer it becomes to me who I am and what I feel about the world, the more evident it becomes that I'm not in the right relationships. I'm looking for people who chase experience, not shopping apps. I need people in my life concerned with higher planes, at the risk of sounding arrogant. Whose idea of connection doesn't involve Wi-fi bars. I need people who don't know what the happening bar is in town, and who don't go out to compare clothing.

I need people who embrace alternative, rather than scoff at it and dismiss it out of hand.

I need people who, when they meet you, say "oh, so you did that..huh..." not "but you should've done this instead".

I need people whose social minimalism matches my own, otherwise I don't think we can be happy for very long.

So what am I doing towards that?

For one, I've learned to stop defining myself by the way other people see me. If you think I'm dull, weird, crazy or whatever, doesn't mean I am. It just means we won't have a very good time together.

I'm also working to reassess. Constantly. I mentioned hanging loose. The trick to doing life right is constantly reassessing, even when you think you've got it all figured out because chances are you don't. I'm weighing who I am and what I need, what kind of connection could feed my soul, what deadens it.

I'm learning that trusting my gut is an ongoing process as opposed to finite. What does your gut say now? seems to be the best solution to most quandaries. Which isn't to say it always leads you right. Just that it's probably the safest choice. When you don't know what's right, go with your gut. Maybe it turns you wrong, but at least you will have done what felt right, and that's all we can aspire to.

Finally, I'm trying to connect more with people who share my values, even if I have to seek them out. I'm seeking out people who dress weird and don't care. Who value crazy quirky shit, a one-of-a-kind gift, a moment of someone paying real attention to you, being heard and offering kindness, over meaningless pleasantries and superficial hangouts.

There was a time in my life when I thought you needed big circles of people, when I thought relationships could only look a certain way. But now that's changing. I'm starting to see you don't need big circles, or to party. That you can be okay with things you can't define, as long as they're true to you.

Will it work? I'll get back to you on that.

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This is my contribution to the #TransformationThursday Weekly Daily Theme. Don't tell anyone, but I'm completely biased. This has always been my favorite of the themes. Just because we're always transforming. Constantly. All the time. The only way to navigate that is by hanging loose, and being open to change. Even when it means changing opinions, views and relationships you thought were cemented.

Check out the themes. Chances are, you're changing as you read this. So why not take the opportunity of someone being interested in hearing about it?

ee