Over the last few days I have been living in what I might term ‘minimal luxury’. I have been taught an extremely valuable lesson, by building on my already existing beliefs of less being more.
I have stayed in a tent on the beach, a treehouse in the woods and now I have a tent pitched on a mattress on a concrete lookout high above an outdoor kitchen.
These living arrangements are the most basic of basic, but have everything one needs. There are cold water showers in bare brick outbuildings, outdoor sinks and bins hanging from the bamboo built kitchen frame. The kitchen floor is a mixture of dry dirt and stones, with an occasional tree root thrown in to test your agility. A gas canister powers a four ring burner and a bungee chord holds the fridge door closed. I have just made use of my coffee bag and sit here in amazement at how perfect all of this is.
This lesson came to me whilst taking a shower the other day; the western world sees wealth and excess as luxury, the higher quality something is, or the more expensive and pristine, or the more bells and whistles something has, then the better it is. However, I am now seeing this as simply excess. I imagine some parts of the western world see the living conditions I explain above as an ‘unfortunate’ way to live, or even a situation that needs to be fixed, “those poor people need money for a better life!” Well, I say no! Money and luxurious items, do not make a person happy, or even make the person. The stripping down of all, has hilighted the unnecessary excess of an exploited western society.

Many have grown accustomed to a certain ‘class’ of living and anything less than that will just seem neanderthal, but richness can be found in the bare bones of the true necessities of life.