Shed the Unnecessary to Live in Kodachrome

This month’s mantra to “Shed the unnecessary to live in Kodachrome” was inspired by a Phoenix Tales Podcast guest, Eden Grimaldi. Her philosophy was borne from her battle with breast cancer, this harrowing experience realigning her own perspective about what is truly important in life...to live and appreciate the here and now since we don’t know how many here and now any of us may have in front of us. 

As I recovered slowly from my most recent relapse of my depression, I’ve had to take stock about every aspect of my professional and personal life as well as my overall health. What became clear to me, even amid the mental haze that dominates when the depression takes a firm hold, was the need to simplify what didn’t need to be complicated in order to clear a path to seeing my life vividly. 

I decided the clearest path, metaphorically and literally, for me to see the beauty of my life in its simplicity was to live as minimally as possible. With this decision I’ve spent time getting rid of physical items that are unnecessary, sometimes hauling outbox upon box of stuff to be donated or thrown out altogether. The act of physically purging my surroundings has been liberating and scary since so much of our life is spent working to accrue ‘stuff’ as validation for how we are living our lives.  

I realize now how much work it is to live a conscious life minimally, how much easier it is to live unconsciously, just accumulating without thought or understanding. What all of this has taught me, most importantly, is to focus on living my life, trying to see the meaning of each day. With this comes the release or letting go of preconceived ideas of what makes for a good day, which until just recently meant being busy meant my life was meaningful, even if it didn’t feel that way all the time. 

As I’ve minimalized, I’ve realized I’m clearing space not to replace what had been removed with something else,  but to just create space for space itself. The best lesson of this awakening is how I can apply this new wisdom to how I view my time and my day. As I’ve created time by trimming my work schedule for self-care, I’ve had to fight the impulse to fill that space with something else to do or something else to commit to. Like letting go of things I’ve spent so many years working to get, the letting go of time commitments has been just as scary, if not more so since being busy was how I saw my own value in the world. There have been days when I’ve not known what to do with myself with the empty blocks of time that seemed to be blinking in neon in my daily calendar. It’s only now after a couple of months that the fear is being replaced by my snail pace of acceptance of these chunks of unscheduled time.  With this acceptance and being OK with slowing down, I have come to understand what it truly means to live in Kodachrome. It is necessary to slow down to be able to see the beauty of your life stripped of adornments.