“Being a minimalist isn’t just about what you carry with you. It’s your entire engagement with the world.” – Everett Bogue
What I Really Learned by Going to College
After keeping my college papers and notes for years, I finally went through every single page to see if I wanted to keep any of it.
As I went through each and every page, I asked myself, “Is there any value in keeping this?”
When I started this Minimalism sub-project, I knew I wanted to eventually tackle my college papers. Mostly because there were drawers full of them. I figured it would be fairly easy and that I’d end up scanning and keeping maybe 25-50% of it.
Well, it was a lot easier than I thought. I probably dumped 95+% of it.
What I wasn’t expecting, is a strange feeling I started getting while going through this stuff.
I asked myself why I was keeping it all these years. I couldn’t come up with a good answer. Eventually, I realized that by keeping all of my college material, I was somehow ‘proving’ to myself that I went to college (and graduated) and that all the time, money, student loans, etc. had been worth it. Even though I don’t technically or directly use my college degree in my professional or personal life, it did have a large impact on me and I learned a lot in the process.
Once I finally stripped all of this stuff out of my life and knew that I’d never see it again, I realized the strong association that most of us put into defining ourselves by our stuff. It was almost as if my college papers somehow defined part of Who I Am.
Now, I always thought I was very good at being myself and knowing who I am, but by taking this Minimalism experiment to further levels I’m realizing how much deeper it goes. I would even go as far to say that I’m discovering who I really am for the first time.
Without all our stuff, who are we really?
What You Own Defines You
Every piece of everything around you is part of who you are. And that’s not a bad thing. Some of the things I own or information I store is definitely part of who I am, and I’m proud of it. But when you get really serious about stripping your life down to the Essentials and only allowing the best of what life has to offer fill your space, you will begin to get a larger sense of yourself and your place in the Universe.
Most people think that life happens to them and their past is their story. When in fact it’s totally optional. I could move to a different country, burn and erase everything from my past that has anything to do with me and completely start over. If I did this, no one would have any idea I ever went to college unless I told them or they dug the information up somehow. If someone asked me to prove I went to college, it would be a little more difficult than just showing them my papers.
As an example, for all the amazing pieces of music Beethoven wrote, how much garbage did he toss? It’s been said that he re-worked his material relentlessly and tossed old revisions. He could have kept it all. He could have kept everything he’d written, terrible or not, and then we’d have the ‘Beethoven Terrible’ collection. But he choose not to define himself by it and only bring into his life his most beautiful pieces.
You are your own biographer, historian, and biggest fan. What does your stuff say about you? And if you choose to keep it, what will it say about you once you’re gone?
Will your progeny really give a rip about your college papers?
This is all very interesting to me. As with most personal growth explorations in life (dietary changes, career moves, new friendships), Minimalism is a road of self-discovery. And I’m projecting that, for me personally, it will be a sort of Rebirth.
Soon I’ll be making a flash-based player that I can slap on the front of this site to make it easy to get a brief overview of my work thus far. Not sure if it will be using the Bandcamp player, as there are so many options.