Looking back, it took me quite a considerable amount of time to make my life as simple as it is now, but this minimalism has become my whole life, fitting me like a perfectly tailored garment. I have been living this way for quite some time, intentionally eating almost the same food every day, wearing the same clothes, avoiding unnecessary distractions of any kind, and being mindful each day of simplifying and streamlining my movements and the flow of my life. And yet, minimalism is not as easy as it sounds, so I still take out garbage bags filled with unnecessary things, tangible and intangible, every other day, or every five days or so. Much like bailing out water from a semi basement room flooding during a torrential downpour, I keep emptying the impurities that accumulate in my life each day, barely managing to preserve the simplicity that could be called the essence of minimalism. That is why, to me, neither minimalism nor simplicity is really a noun, but a verb.
When I think about why minimalism has become so important to me, I realize that, at least for me, I have to simplify and simplify my life that much just to barely keep up with everything I need to take care of. I have spent not hundreds but thousands of days living like some eccentric alchemist, experimenting, finding mistakes, correcting them, and improving, just to properly care for this life that is neither particularly big nor spacious. And yet, despite all those years of effort, no one knows how much I still run around on my own from morning to night just to keep this life in order.
When I look at other people, they seem to take vacations every season, enjoy leisurely meals at restaurants with beautiful terraces on Friday evenings or weekend mornings, and make time for all the things everyone else seems to do. So, I often wonder how they manage to have enough time and energy left to take care of even the very foundations that sustain their lives. But I don’t have that kind of knack, so to protect what matters more to me, I have had to fiercely strip away what matters less. In that sense, I might say that minimalism is, for me, another name for “love.”
What, then, have I loved with all that I saved by living so diligently and frugally? What is this love I am trying to protect, while running around all day and pushing myself endlessly, like an octopus stretching out all eight arms to handle eight things at once?
If I were a train racing toward money, I would scrape together every bit of time and energy, set up three or six monitors, and spend my days staring at stock charts. If I craved social status, I would devote myself to earning a fancier name tag. If romance were the center of my universe, I would live a busy life wrapped up in being lovey-dovey with someone. Of course, I cannot completely overlook such things, so I pursue that money, status, and romance in my own rhythm. But no matter how I think about it, those are things I need and find useful, not what I truly love or what my soul longs for.
Instead, what I truly love, I suppose, is being able to do the things I want to do to my heart’s content, filling my soul with the joy of being alive, with vitality, and with secret beauties. So, with the time I have saved, penny by penny, I run to the mountains and sea during the hottest hours of the day to absorb all that energy, and shut myself away in solitude, immersing myself in meditation with the sharpness of a honed blade. I also devote that time to finding good books and films, writing, and keeping my body and mind clean and well tended.
Because these are things that cannot be measured in money or credentials, this life, devoted far more to value investing than to futures, options, or leverage, may seem to remain forever in the same place, like someone trying to move a great mountain with nothing but a shovel. And yet, in this world, does it not sometimes happen that the weakest and most seemingly foolish things overtake those more powerful and better at calculation, and eventually shine more brilliantly? I do not know all that much, But I have witnessed that strange reversal a few times throughout my life, and it now has that truth etched deeply in me. Thanks to that, I have been able to continue this love, difficult for me to explain, without doubt or wavering.
I sometimes reflect on what it means to live as an artist. From a young age, I wanted to become an artist and live that life, even without knowing what it truly meant. That obsession and longing, perhaps born of lack and desire, grew as intense as sparks from a welding torch, and as such stories often end in ruin, my life too came crashing down because of it. Now, I live a life completely different from the one I dreamed of at twenty, without any complaint or dissatisfaction about it. These days, I neither introduce myself as a writer nor want the preconceptions such an image evokes. Yet, no matter how many times I try to cast it away, an instinct within me as a writer refuses to let go. So, after living quietly, as though I were a werewolf in disguise, whenever the full moon rises I cannot help but return to that tiresome writing, the writing I both love and hate.
In this way, only after repeating that cycle of cutting ties and reconciling countless times did I accept this love that could not be cast away. And at the end of that journey, I found a secret path on no map, one only I know, leading to the place I had so earnestly wanted to reach throughout my youth. It was the realization that, since I could not become an artist dazzlingly brilliant with talent as I had dreamed, the only way to continue this love was to become twice as diligent, so that only after taking care of everything without exception as an ordinary member of society, could I use my remaining time and energy to love what I love. Looking back, my obsession with simplifying my life was all rooted in that context.
Thus, though it took time to get here, I now have a clear belief; “An artist is none other than one who lives diligently.” It means being willing to start the day earlier and move more swiftly to make the time and space to love what I truly love. It also means calmly carrying that difficulty and weight, while reminding myself, whenever irritation and sensitivity flare up again, why I willingly endure this effort. What is interesting is that this belief, as much as my own writing, often lifts me up and restores me when I am weary.
Anyway, these days I am rowing with all my might through days packed to the brim, as if I were playing Tetris with time, keeping up with my studies, earning the money I have to pay the school each term, taking care of my work and the clients who come to see me, and at the same time taking care of both my body and mind. Because of this, there are times when the path I am on feels endlessly arduous and confusing, much like when I am climbing a high mountain and have around half an hour left before reaching the summit.
And yet, what I also come to realize is how much knowing clearly what matters most to us helps us quietly endure and let pass the countless small waves we encounter in life. Because I knew clearly what mattered most to me, I was able to empty out and empty out the rest, creating a clearer simplicity, and ultimately protect the most honest and genuine love for my own life without being swallowed up by the vague cloud of dust we simply call “everyday life.” In a sense, I suppose it is such a wonderful virtuous cycle, brought about by putting everything this life has on the line.
I trace that beautiful trajectory with my hands and heart, savoring it. I also contemplate as deeply as I can the strange principle of this life, in which emptying and emptying and emptying leads to a fullness of things far more precious than I could even dare to desire. In the end, I once again feel that there is not much I can do with this life except take a step back and become more humble. And I now understand, at least a little, that the true meaning of that humility is neither to be easily swallowed up by the past nor to hastily presume the future, but to immerse myself more and more deeply in this very day, today, and connect with the deepest and most intense abyss I can reach.
So, to me, that is love, that is writing, that is the life of an artist, that was what mattered most, and I had been giving up so much for so long, and still am, in order to leave this one thing behind.
© Text & Photos by Tao Jung