Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism

Go look around your house. Do you have lots of stuff? Let me ask you this, do you need all the items you have? Probably not.

In this short yet wonderful book, Fumio Sasaki details the joy of having less, and how anybody can get there. I enjoyed how Sasaki backed up his argument for minimizing with interesting propositions. Why do we enjoy buying new things? It is because it gives a sense of novelty. This often misleads people to buying more. “It’s hard for us to accurately forecast how our feelings will change from our initial joy when we buy [something], to familiarity, and later to boredom,” writes Sasaki, “At the outset, when we don’t actually own the [item], it seems like the joy could simply go on forever.” He also notes the irony of the fact that during natural disasters such as earthquakes, the items that are supposed to make us happy actually threaten our lives.

Psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky says that 50 percent of our happiness is genetically determined, 10 percent by life and circumstances, and the remaining 40 percent by our daily actions. (247) Sasaki writes, “Happiness is basically something that each of us can measure only by declaring our own sense of contentment. A person might be in a difficult situation that looks rough to others, but if they feel that they’re happy, if they’re grateful for their condition, then that person is happy, That’s why our actions make up 40 percent of your happiness.” We need to stop trying to become happy, we need to start feeling happy. In the end, happiness is not having more; it starts with being grateful for what you have. Less, in the end, can really be much, much more