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Addition By Subtraction: Why Marie Kondo Is The Hero We Need
Most of us blame a lack of time for not pursuing what’s actually important us. Our lives are full of obligations, commitments … and stuff. So much stuff. If there’s a “first world problem,” it isn’t that we don’t have time, it’s that our stuff takes up too much of it.
One of the first movies I saw as a child was “Labyrinth.” In one scene, the heroine, Sarah, encounters a junk witch. The witch shows Sarah all the toys and knick-knacks that are special to her, and piles them up on Sarah’s back, gradually transforming Sarah into a junk witch too. To free herself from the spell, Sarah has to let go of all the things that weigh her down. After all, they are just things.
That scene has always stuck with me. In college, I didn’t envy the guys with fancy cars and big stereos; I envied the guys who were perfectly happy to live in an almost-empty room with a couple of books on the shelf, and three or four shirts hanging in the closet. At one point, I lived in a tiny efficiency apartment: a place so small, I had to leave all my stuff at my parents’ house. It was, by far, the favorite of all the places I’ve ever lived. It was still messy sometimes, but it was so much emptier than every other place I’ve ever lived that I actually had space to breath. Space to live.
