Simplicity, simplicity
Silence is a rare thing in a city. Cities are usually filled with loud sounds including car sounds and music from fast food restaurants, cafes and shops. Why can’t we stay in silence? If we are always in loud environments, it may be difficult to listen to our inner voices telling us how we really feel and how we really want to live.
Many of us also want to fill our houses with a lot of things. However, if we look closely, we will find that we already have too many things. We want to have more and more, but do we really need all of it? Are they essential to our true and lasting happiness?
There are countless things to enjoy in nature if we just look around —yellow kerria flowers as soft as babies' hair, fragrant lilacs, white rhododendron flowers, shining tender green leaves. We can be happy without possessing more.
In “Walden,” Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion.”
Perhaps because many of us feel discontented, we want to feel satisfied, even if temporarily, by consuming more and more things, overeating or continuing some other unhealthy habits.
This spring, I organized my bookshelves. I gave away some books and threw away old papers which are not necessary anymore. Of my six bookshelves, one is completely empty now. I will keep it empty for the time being. In addition, I deleted unnecessary emails and computer files.
I also organized my wardrobe and donated some of the clothes to charity. I realized I had more clothes than I needed. In her book “I Decided Not to Buy New Clothes,” Lee So-yeon shows how the fast fashion industry has caused serious environmental pollution problems. With the growth of this industry, wastewater and fabric waste have been greatly increasing.
We buy and discard clothes too easily. Nevertheless, as they rot in landfills, toxic substances that include carbon dioxide and methane are emitted, thereby causing global warming. The fashion industry is responsible for about 10 percent of carbon emitted globally.
Moreover, many workers in the fast fashion industry are working in an unsafe environment. In 2013, a garment factory in Bangladesh collapsed, which led to the deaths of more than 1,100 people. Knowing all these problems, the author says that she has not bought new clothes for the last five years.
Living with fewer things, we can feel lighter. Especially as we get older, we come to know that the time that is given to us is limited and want to spend our precious time and energy on what is truly important in life, not on superficial things.
After I organized what I had and got rid of unnecessary things, what to do and what not to do became clearer.
Kim Sun-ae (blog.naver.com/everythingchanges) wrote "Old Potato, New Potato" and translated "Little Lord Fauntleroy."