Potency.
Everything about this project—from the writing to the selling; from the making friends with strangers to the letting go of beloved possessions, to the current result of living in a furniture-less loft with nothing but a blow-up mattress and a turtle...Everything about Leaving Wooster is carried out with a purpose to live with more potency. Because we've made ourselves "lighter", less cramped, and more focused on the life we want to pursue in the right now—not in the five years from now or the ten years from now. The right now.
Artwork by Igal Fedida (http://www.igalfedida.com)
We've been waiting to leave the loft all month, and though the actual apartment is the one thing that has taken the longest to get rid of — I've learned that this "waiting time" is also a part of the process. Did you know that with less stuff surrounding you, you also have less stuff to sidetrack you? More than ever, I've found myself focusing on the "right things".
For Aviv + I, the right things are each other. The right things are our family, our friends. The right things are in the present moment— and they include nourishing meals and exercising morning creativity! The right things are in connecting with people and in making new acquaintances.
You might be wondering—well, didn't you have those things before? And the answer is yes. But as I've been meditating on it more, I think the difference in all of this comes down to how we choose to define ourselves.
So far, in letting go of so many things I thought defined me, I've learned to redefine myself by the things listed above instead. Throughout these past 4 months, every time one of those things happens, something speaks to me with the most pleasant voice imaginable and says: this is happiness, you've arrived!
In the end, living minimally is a mindfulness exercise. The truth is that you don't have to get rid of everything in order to know how to redefine your everything—but it does make the process easier, and your life less junky, and it's forces you there—to the place where you know, deep down, to whom and what you truly want to project your energy towards; to whom and what you want to choose to make your focus right now.
And man, it's potent.
As my wonderful 9th grade teacher said every week, Happy Thursday! :)
-P+A