published by WaterBrook is a fantastic book.Wonderfully written, clear and concise, right to the point, fluent and intriguing the author shares through this book his new philosophy of life from 2008: the one of Minimalism.
What does Minimalism mean ? Living with less a much more intense and plenty life.
How can it be possible to do that?
Our society is a consumerist reality where people are taken in consideration because they can spend. A compulsive society where we are overwhelmed everyday by messages, ads, publicity for let us buy always more.
We keep our houses plenty of things most of the time absolutely unnecessary or in an exaggerated number because of it.
Joshua Becker focuses in a new life-style where what it will be important won't be anymore the big house with all the expenses necessary for maintaining it, won't it be the big car, or the rich furniture of a house, but...people and their main interests in a best quality life.
In fact the author says, it is important a massive declutter of the stuff in the house for living with less but living a best life, because when we are surrounded by too many objects we lose the best part of us. We become selfish, arrogant, egoist, we are not able to seeing the other one as our brother, we are not able to giving to anyone anything because of our ego.
It's indispensable to understand that this society sometimes can be superficial. Every person in a certain moment will buy the same pair of shoes of a certain brand because everyone say that it is trendy. Just a little example but let's admit it, the human being is like a sheep: we love to follow the current.
And what does in term of quality-time and intelligence mean? A lot, because following the standards of this society means not always to follow quality, but mainly appearance. The beautiful house, the beautiful car, and so on.
Why people are important in this society? Are they important just because of their capacities of spending money?
In the past, in the remote past, society and messages mainly spread were the ones of saving money. At the moment men, women and children are lived like potential consumers.
Speaking with a friend of mine time ago for the special issue of Christmas, topic toys, I discovered for example that children must be also very stressed by this society, because they don't have anymore any kind of certainty and any kind of real super-hero at long as we had when we were little. They explained me that children's toys are products of movies, cartoons and they can exist just for six months, one year if they are lucky.
Scary.
Back to the book, Mrs Jane, during a hard working day in the garage for Joshua Becker, introduced him at what it would have meant a complete change of life-style for this man and his family: minimalism. Jane told that afternoon to Joshua Becker that her daughter lived in the minimalism so she wouldn't never spent too much time cleaning the house but she would have had much more time to spend THIS with friends and family.
To Becker, absent with his kid who wanted to play with him because busy in the garage, a revelation. He talked immediately with his wife and they decided to proceed and to change their life-style.
For better.
Becker explains minimalism doesn't want to say austerity.
Each Minimalist is different and starts to join this great community for personal reasons. There are reporters, retired people, teenagers in this colored group of the "Philosophers of the good time spent well and with less."
What a minimalist does is keeping space, emotive, physical, emotional for himself/herself and for his/her family, without to be surrounded by too many redundant objects but just by the necessary.
It doesn't mean that we should avoid to have a TV, or PC or smart phone.
We should adopt a different and more healthy life-style, sober, able to let us appreciate thanks to the Minimalism our New Us.
Objects, surplus, is able to create chaos all around us and this is extremely dangerous for a good and emotive development of our real personality too much oppressed by what we are surrounded by.
It's like a sensation of suffocating. Once you will set you free from all the objects you will be free to re-construct your real Self.
Many the example introduced by Joshua Becker including of course his immense, wonderful story.
Altruism, generosity, donation, must enter in the dictionary of your new life.
It's wonderful to donate in many ways: time, money, joining an association or a charity for helping people in needs or simply assisting some neighbors in need.
From his experience, Becker discourages to sell the material once you decide to throw it away. They tried but they did accumulate just 135 dollars. So they started to call many associations and charities in need of the most diversified items they wanted to give away and Becker remembers his joy in giving away unwanted stuff able to make the difference for other men, women and children.
Becker insists that everyone once taken the decision of becoming minimalist should donate everything away without asking money, but contacting local charities.
A lady created an association of wealthy women for donating the Wedding Ring for bringing water in Africa. This association fascinated me a lot because I remembered that the same experiment was made by the ladies of the South during the Secession War of 1861-1865. Married ladies were asked to donate their wedding ring for the cause of the war.
Becker asks to everyone to live in the substance and not in the appearance.
Our society is mainly built in the appearance. Becker add that there is always more request for plastic surgeries in the USA, but gym is neglected, people eat junk food so they become always more fat developing important social illnesses. What it is important to do according to the author is to return to a normality made of friendship, family, good sleeping time, eating properly, watching less TV and adopting a more human life-style.
A wealthy life-style means less time for family, children, friends.
This book is not only beauty, it's felt, written with decision, with force and with the soul. It's extremely powerful. While you read the words of the author you start to feel what he says and while you are reading it you think: this author will make the difference for a lot of people in the world!
*I received a copy of this book from Blogging For Books in exchange for an honest review.*
Anna Maria Polidori
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