So you can’t hold on to people. We all try, and we learn that we need to learn not to try. Let people go. And what about things? what about the car and the new car, and the house, and the bigger house and the laptop and the game console and the travel to asia? what about all that?
Arguments abound on reducing our footprint, our environmental impact. But we don’t want to, or perhaps we can’t. Look at the great shift that has happened in the last decade on environmental policy. We are switching to what we call sustainable energy sources. Wind and sun instead of carbon and oil. No doubt that we are living in a cleaner planet, even if the cleaning does not happen at the speed that we need. But have we really reduced our impact? Have we let go? Are we really convinced that owning a Tesla and being shareholder of a few wind turbines is really better than owning a foul, dirt spilling V8 Ford truck? For the environment it is, beyond doubts. But is it good for us? Is it better?
I need to be careful here… it does feel that I am channeling some sort of conservative protestant preacher, haranging -with a raised bonny finger- a congregation of equally thin, grey and austere people on the sins of the flesh. The utmost caricature of the north of europe, all in sharp contrast with the catholic origins of my genes and, whatever that might mean, my culture. I hear myself saying that we should have less, that we should let go so much of the shit that surrounds us, and a part of me does tell me “really inti?… are you really going now for a lifetime of monastic soberness? would you not allow yourself to drink a good wine because it is brought from France, or god forbids, the whole way from Argentina?”
So let that sink for a while. It is so that as soon as we start considering less, when we get to think in simplify and minimalize, a voice raises and call us partypoopers, spoilsports, preachers and whatnot. If you allow me only one sentence on politics today, that frame is the greater problem of my green party, that image of being always the spoilsport. But never mind politics today. Is it really a partypooper the wish of having less? Or, if you prefer, is it really a party to have more? Does that really makes us happier and better?
Or could it be that we are slowly burying ourselves in a mountain of things and obligations and costumes and stuff! that is not making us happy but -actually- terribly unhappy?
Would it be really possible that less is more?