Greetings everyone! 🙌
Around 5:00 am today when I woke up from sleep, everywhere was calm, and I decided to use the opportunity to write on the Minimalist community. When I saw the prompt, I paused for a while with many thoughts running through my mind, trying to pick the days I actually adjusted to a life of Minimalism. I went on for about ten minutes, and the only answer that was popping up was "you started you're minimalist lifestyle from childhood"
That's just the absolute truth. Reflecting back on my early days... to the years I became sensible, I met my parents not financially buoyant; they were farmers on a subsistence level which only provided food and little money via the sale of those farm produce in the local market.
I'm not disputing their hard work in raising my siblings and me; they did very well, but we were not opportune to live the standard life of eating whatever one feel like eating or wearing trending clothes like other children. Our feeding was basically on the produce from the farm, especially the 'garri'.
Eating rice then was on an occasional level because rice was expensive and we don't produce rice on our farms.
Oh, should I talk about tea? Taking tea then was seen as a thing of the rich because the rich people don't do hard work like going to farm.
As for us, we worked on the farm, and taking tea to go and work on the farm meant we would need to eat another round of food in 30 minutes. What's the essence of spending money on such food while we could just have a 'permanent' food?
This is where 'garri' (cassava flake) came in because it usually last longer in the stomach compared to rice and any other type of fancy meal.
During my days in school, there were times I was queried by my colleagues for settling for some basic type of food and not going for the classic feeding type like them. I was different from them because they had a lot of money, which gave them the option of eating different foods. But for me, I had little, and instead of going for fancy food, I preferred to settle with food that would last longer to avoid buying or cooking all the time.
This didn't stop in my school lifestyle; it has followed me till today and has helped me a lot in not eating recklessly. Just like the way I have a neighbor who buys everything that's being hawked on the road, and I wonder if he's saving at all.
This may sound awkward...
Living with family at home, we were cultured not to fancy those expensive and trending clothes. I don't know about other places, but in Nigeria during Christmas season, some designs of clothes come as trending, and these clothes are always expensive. My mom would instead go to a far market where things are cheap and get us nice and cheap wears as Christmas clothes, which we didn't feel oppressed by friends.
Do you know the funny thing? These trendy clothes always come down in price after they have lasted for some years, and by then, mom would get them cheap if she feels like getting it for us, but by then, it's no longer trendy. Till today, this has been with me; I prefer not to go for trending expensive wears. Instead, I would go for nice wears that are reasonable fair in price... after all, I'll still appear nice.
Thanks for reading.
This is my entry to #KISS prompt in the MINIMALIST COMMUNITY
Images are mine
