Clean up, clean out, give away – minimalism is in, and for many a first step to peace and harmony. However, a reminder is in need of a legacy, according to Carmen-Francesca Banciu.
For years, the growing Trend for minimalism. Whether at the beginning of your adult life or just before retirement, want to live a lot of people in a sustainable manner, everything Superfluous away, and reducing them to the Essential, focus. It is a philosophical, social, ethical attitude propagated by the conscious renunciation and self-responsibility in dealing with resources, with the life of animals, of other people.
Minimalist living: without a loads get rid of sense in order to lead a meaningful life. The teaching of Feng Shui, which promotes the harmonisation of humans with their environment, recommends regular Mucking out to keep the Chi, the flow of energy in movement. We live in a time in which people are thirsting for relief, harmony and leisure. Orientation are looking for. Clearing out and order is a promise to make the harmony away. To make life easier. Waiver promises, the more people there are on the planet.
Has reduce the size of the economy
Marie Kondos clean-up counselors have hit the scene like a flash of lightning. Meanwhile, the trim-and-clearing out fever has gripped millions of people. And minimalism has become a desirable goal. Waiver, the new virtue. Some have rushed to dispose of the own library and of trust on Wikipedia and on the storage in the Cloud. Some rely on the Akasha chronicle, the palm leaf library of the Indian temple, on the holographic universe and the access to Information and infinite Knowledge on the Internet.
Some have digitized their photos and the boxes with family photos thrown away. I have photos on old phones, the appearance of let in only ten years, texts, stored on floppy disks and Floppy Disks that have become unreadable.
Too much of everything: clearing out the past
Recently, Swisscom has accidentally deleted data from thousands of people permanently entrusted to the company for storage. These people have not only lost important documents forever, but to also have personal memories that they believed in an infinitely large memory ensure.
You can be from the loss of memory, which is part of the identity of ever being compensated? And as we continue to live without these memories? How our children live without the Knowledge about who we were? We are preparing for a future without memory? What you will tell about us? What will it give to tell you about us, if we get rid of letters, pictures, objects, and many small and seemingly insignificant traces? Maybe more space in the world is created as a result. But what a world this will be?
Many young people today are living in WGs with little room for personal Memories. Anyone who has unpacked a parents ‘ house with an attic in the grandchildren and great-grandchildren, dusty suitcases, and trunks, and real treasures can be found in it. Whether objects or things of goodwill.
Scraps of paper for the reminder
When I came to Germany, I brought a manuscript with the Luggage. Later, we were able to save some photos and small items. My children are happy about every paper, on every scrap that reminds you of your time in Romania, a photo of my great-grandmother. The small pocket of her recently-deceased grandmother. The large-framed mother, they say. The bag is also a reminder that I’ve used in a novel.
As the parents of the future English poet and Man Booker International Award carrier George Szirtes flee in a night on the green border from Hungary in the West, is the eight-year-old George, the responsibility for a case is entrusted to. In it are the family photos. The flight back over a number of decades. Only this year, George has released a touching Memoire, The Photographer at Sixteen, a book based on the family photos from the suitcase. The book, with the traces of memory is just on the way to becoming a best-seller.
How could have caused a lot of novels, and how poor the history of literature, but also in all of our lives, without the tracks, have the leave the other for us. And as the dry, impoverished will be the life of future generations, if you will not find any cinema piece of paper more of your great grandfather’s first visit to the cinema. From Grandma’s Diary. This is all pointless nostalgia, dust collector, space eater, the a say. Traces of my past. Traces of me. A part of me. I. We. The others have to say.
Refugees, the true minimalists
Declutter, relieve, liberate, let go, abandon. Resignation as a virtue, under the pretext of necessity. Is it worth living in a world in which there is no memory, no attachment to the ancestors, no personal traces of the past? And it is conceivable that one day the call comes up, to destroy libraries, to dispose of the museums in order to create space. But where then with all this stuff? If I don’t know, I remember a law of physics I learned in school: Nothing is lost in nature, it is transformed from one Form to another.
The new minimalism: clarity, Overview, free space – but a little reminder
Refugees are the most true minimalist. Anyone who has crossed on a boat to the sea, has rarely a personal item. What is left is perhaps the hope that you can someday return to the old home, that war and destruction have destroyed all personal traces of the past and disposed of it. No one has cleared out the family house. And you can still build there in its history. Reminder you need to leave to the descendants. You need them but also for yourself, if you set up his life from Zero in the new home. It helps his old life to bring, and to integrate it in the new location. To find his place in the new home.
Carmen-Francesca Banciu was born in Romania, came in 1991 to Berlin at the invitation of the artist programme of the DAAD. Since 1992, she lives here as a freelance writer, journalist, editor and lecturer of creativity and creative Writing. Since 1998, she writes mainly in English. Banciu has received numerous awards and scholarships.