Maturing Is Not Always About Adding Things: You Also Have To Learn To Subtract
The society in which we live has created false needs for us, which push us to want to achieve certain goals in order to achieve the security and well-being they provide us. These needs make us feel a desire for addition which is transformed into a synonym of happiness while this desired well-being actually consists in learning to subtract.
We don’t realize that this thirst for adding up makes our lives more complex, difficult and, at times, unbearable. This is when we get stressed and when time seems to give us nothing, when it is not. In fact, we occupy it with things that make us feel more empty instead of filling us up.
Learning to subtract is synonymous with maturity
In a world where adding things up is so well regarded, where the accumulation of unnecessary items means wealth, and having a large number of friends guarantees you a good image, learning to take things off becomes an act of rebellion. This will test us as we will go against the vision of a vast majority of people, which is a real challenge.
When we go against all these patterns of behavior, the ones that most of society repeats without realizing it, we see the criticisms, value judgments and multiple observations about how we act that cause us to act. return to the starting point. Starting to believe that adding up is important.
This place, the origin of many of our fears and insecurities, where we begin to put on layers with the pretension of adding up. However, behind this happiness of being in a relationship, there is perhaps only a great fear of being abandoned; behind this gratitude for having so many friends, we were perhaps only afraid of being alone.
How many times have we sought the approval of others? How many times have we stopped prioritizing ourselves because we were focused on the people around us? The image that we project, therefore, is that of a mature person, responsible and accompanied by many people. But that comes at a price: the impossibility of learning to subtract and get rid of things.
The liberation of embracing simplicity
Learning to subtract is very important to stop accumulating unnecessary things in our life, knowing that many of them only bring us pain. Remove friends who are only looking for us out of interest, abandon companions who don’t love us deeply, stop buying things that only fill physical space and increase our emotional void.
When we are able to see that the happiness of adding things to our life is just a mirage, we will be ready to change the view we have had on the world until then. We will realize what we don’t need, what is too much, what hinders us. We will know how to say “goodbye”.
Very often we see that people who have a lot of money feel empty or miserable. Or we observe that those who have the most friends find themselves alone in difficult times … And what about those who accumulate relationships but who are, deep down, always looking for someone to help them? really like.
Finally, taking refuge behind the false security of additions makes us pretend a comfort that we do not feel, in a situation which only increases our discomfort. A discomfort that pushes us to free ourselves, to say goodbye to complexity and to embrace simplicity. Because everything can become much simpler. However, too often we look for the twisted and complex things that end up hurting us.
Learning to subtract does not only mean letting go of everything that occupies unnecessary space: it also means recovering a balance that should govern our life. A balance that would make us feel good and happy. Even if this is only possible when we stop attaching ourselves to complex things and move towards simplicity.
Images of Oleg Oprisco
Our thoughts Our vision of love gradually evolves as we mature, leading to truly adult love.
