“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even if it breaks your egocentric little […] heart, kill your darlings”
Does it ever happen to you that when you have something in mind, bits and pieces of your daily life come to whisper your theory is real?
In a more trivial perspective, this is really what went down: the weekend when I switch the wardrobe is fast approaching and I look at my winter clothing in a survival of the fittest mode.
How am I going to fit everything in storage? I can see piles of keep, give away, donate and toss, like in Sex & the City And yes, I always include a closet party with rosé and canapés because it makes the whole ordeal much more pleasant.
In a matter of a few days I first listened to an interview, dissertation on Essentialism. The Disciplined Pursue of Less by Greg McKeown and second was privileged enough to attend the award ceremony of the Pritzker Architecture Prize and the unveiling of the tent structure the posthumous honoree, late German architect Frei Otto, designed in 1953.
“You can do a few things superbly well, or a lot of things averagely well”
McKeown's book begins from the idea that we are ensconced in the ‘you can have it all’ mentality in which we must say ‘yes’ unconditionally.
We live in the busyness bubble, an imaginary race to sleep less, be busier than your neighbor under the false illusion of getting this invisible badge of honor.
Our days unfold through the tangled madness of long to-do lists that only lead us to be counterproductive, frustrated and anxious for not having completed tasks.
A life in which we look for more in a panting and puffing state, without really knowing what and, worst, why.
Greg thinks it’s best to live in a JOMO (Joy) state of mind and avoid the FOMO (Fear) like a pestilence.
Hyper-connected reality leads us not to think but to act in a routine that almost resembles flocks of migrant birds that, on a predetermined day of the year, all move somewhere else.
The solution to this? Less but better, to say it with Dieter Rams, that is: focus your choices towards innovation, part exploration of what works for you and part elimination of what doesn’t work for you.
Frei Otto was an architect whose visions, talent, humbleness contributed to humanity with the simple concept of more with less. ‘A good design never gets old’, confirmed Shigeru Ban during the panel introduction in a heartfelt tribute to his friend and colleague who was being awarded the prize after life took him away.
The tent is perfect, it holds up without a center pole, it protects you from the rain and keeps ventilation moving in and out, it’s white and blends within the environment, but more so, it’s so current yet planned and created 62 years ago.
Look, I am not going all Socrates on you, I am shooting a dart to my point, which is not really mine, as McKeown uses a closet as a metaphor to explain all these honing and pruning of your life, but I am really going to use the closet as the main focus.
What Otto contributed to my cogitations? The element of timeless.
Try to read all of the above in your own closet and it translates as follows.
- You can’t have it all in your closet, can you?
If you let your budget rule your closet you end up: frustrated (honestly, who can afford runway prices?), frantically buying fast fashion (knock-offs and the ethical dooming proposition of wearing the product of a child’s labor), losing sight of what your style is while being drifted away by the El Nino effect of trends bombarding you and blurring your judgement.
- Busyness bubble is the equivalent of having too much that we don’t have anything to wear for the right occasion.
Sounds familiar?
- FOMO is the pressure of the hyper-connection, the pressure to perform no matter what, to spend your paycheck in that pair of shoes you saw that blogger wearing at the event. Or falling for the latest IT bag which will be surpassed by another at the dawn of the new season.
- Hyperconnectivity: we have a daily impulse that calls us to buy and own without knowing why, without a rational criteria other than being prompted by the endowment effect command which makes us love more things that we own.
- Timeless is the opposite of trendy and I will never get tired of mentioning it. Trends are what keep fashion moving and your closet alive, but when trends trickle down, it's time to move on to the next. It all makes sense when you are at peace with your own style where your way of dressing speaks your personality away. So, by criterias of pruning, honing, de-cluttering, cleaning, eliminating you master the art of more with less.
With me it's a work in progress, how about you? Take over the comment area!