FREEDOM of LESS: One Man's Minimalist Journey

Joy changes the bones of your face man. Joy is a giggle. .

. a giggle and definitely a little bit silly too. Yeah, joy is an energy.

Joy is our gift. In the beginning of my current lifestyle my family were really concerned about me. They said I’m living in a dream world.

I don’t have dependants. I don’t have children. If I had, I wouldn’t even have thought of doing this.

It would be extremely irresponsible. I love people, and I love people that love me too. And I don’t want them to worry about me.

So I could never have done this living with somebody that I cared about. So it’s been a bit of a struggle in the beginning of my journey as a minimalist to put everyone that loves me at peace with what I’m doing. Theo is a traveller.

He owns nothing but the few possessions which fit into a bag on his back. Many people find my lifestyle as a form of criticism. I am.

I’m critical. But I’m not critical personally. I’m critical to the system.

I don’t find guilt with somebody who’s doing exactly what they believe in. They know they’re doing the right thing according to everything they know. I respect that.

That’s beautiful. I don’t support commerce. As little as possible.

And that makes me a little bit of a freak. I know the other side of it very well. I also stood on people for my own comfort.

I was a businessman; I was a jeweller. I dealt with gold and diamonds and US dollars. And rubies and tanzanites.

And all the trinkets throughout the decades of doing that rest very heavily on my conscience. The literal mountains of ore that was dug out of the earth for my sake. And I justified it through commercial sentences, corporate sentences.

The one thing that bothered me during my life as a businessman was my huge keyring, the heavy keyring. The keys were to protect all I had accumulated. I had been robbed and I lost everything.

I was happy to lose the keys. I was very happy. It was too heavy for me; it was too heavy.

Literally and psychologically. And without things that were accumulative I didn’t need keys anymore. Up to my current lifestyle where I haven’t had a key in my hand for a long time.

People surround themselves with objects to boost comfort. I’ve shaved my stuff off. This is about half of what I own.

. . what I’m wearing here.

One has to be pragmatic. I cannot appear in public with nothing on. I have to have clothes.

So at this stage I have three long pants and I also have a neat shirt or two. The rest is all thermal underwear, socks, jackets. That’s all I have.

So when you weigh my entire kit, it weighs 9. 6 kg. So that’s not much.

I don’t depend on something to make me happy. I don’t have to have a coke with ice in it in a frothy glass. It’s lovely.

But to me, that coke is ten times more delicious than to somebody who has it often. And that is a way of describing how things become easier. Everything becomes easier.

I’m not only a minimalist. I’m a volunteer. That’s how I keep it going.

This is not my house. I don’t have a house. I exchange board and lodging, board and keep, for my volunteering.

Since I’ve started volunteering, building people gardens and beautifying spaces, it’s been decades that I’ve worked without numeration. I’ve just worked for board and keep. A kiss of the sun for laughter.

A kiss of the moon for mirth. One is closer to god in a garden than anywhere else on earth. I spend my days in gardens.

To me that’s heaven. . .

a garden is heaven. I think there are some religions who actually see heaven as a garden. The passage of time blurs.

When you look again it’s lunchtime. I call that awareness and consciousness. To be aware of where you are, here, now.

We have a million little choices every day. This way? That way?

Which foot do you get out of bed with? It’s non ending. To me, the deliberation of your choices and I would actually like to say the mindfulness of everyday choices.

. . how much does it matter to you?

Some choices have a much greater impact than others. And there has to be very real deep reasons for making those choices. My brother Richelieu explained it like this.

He said, ‘What are you immersed in Theo? ’ And I didn’t quite get what he meant. But I do now.

I immerse myself in things of my choice. I’m steeped in it. And when you’re a teabag steeped in water tea happens, right.

So I’m a teabag and I’m forever steeping myself in different situations. And it must be part of the reason why I wake up with hope and with joy in the morning. I’m running away from who I was, definitely.

But I’m also running towards something. Same action, but it means a little bit different. The ends are a little bit different.

I’m making sure that I don’t become the smug, arrogant guy that I knew when I was younger. When we become at peace with our integrity, which is our behaviour when no one is watching, when we become at peace with that and you know that you are visible anyway, if only to yourself. In terms of being who you would like to be.

. . there’s a little story that happened to me.

I asked my psychologist friend, ‘Hey Anton, do you have any magic? ’ ‘Or do you always just sit there and listen? ’ And he said, ‘I do.

’ He set his watch to 40 minutes. He sent me to my room to look in a mirror into my own eyes for 40 minutes. Not at my wrinkles or my facial expression.

But straight into my pupils, into my eyes. And he asked me to return to him after the 40 minutes for the magic to happen. And I did.

And then obviously he said, ‘So Theo, what happened? ’ Typical of a psychologist. .

. tell me you know. .

. I said to him, ‘I saw myself. ’ And he said, ‘And?

’ I said, ‘I’m already who I want to be. ’ ‘I can see it in my eyes. ’ I couldn’t lie to myself.

That keeps me remembering that I’m actually just in a process, like all of us, working on ourselves, becoming more of who we want to be, how we want to be. I wake up with joy and hope in the mornings. My joy is based solely on my respect for myself.

For myself to be true to what I believe in. Enjoying my gift of the ability of living this lifestyle. Super carefulness, light footedness, light tread, non invasive, facilitating, forgiving lifestyle which shines so brightly to me.

Hope and joy is linked. My hope has roots. .

. it has foundation. My hope has a reason.

It’s not just something hanging in the air. It’s tangible, it’s very real. And I get proof from it daily.

. . .

I get it. I actually have started living in a world of true magic, wonder. What people call synchronicity to me is a common everyday occurrence.

That’s how life works. We’ve just got to tune into it. We learn this at our death bed, we remember this then.

. . recognising the preciousness within ourselves and others.

The worth. . .

our inherent, irremovable worth.