I haven't always seen myself as a minimalist till recently when I started portraying some acts of it that my closest people had to question me. Being a minimalist is something people tend to call "stingy" or, should I say, "greedy" in my part of the world; they would be like, "Spend your money." I do spend my money, but that doesn't mean I should spend it lavishly on things that don't matter.
I've come to the actual realization that in this life we are living every day trying to navigate through, whatever you do, people will always have something to contribute to it, yeah!! (I'm not shouting) just increasing the tone of my voice "Well, that also shouting" If you spend money too much they would come to you and be like "Save up, don't be spending like this" Now when you don't spend much, the same people will still come to you and be like "spend your money, don't be doing greedy" like, yeah I'm still confused as you are.
Being a minimalist has taught me a lot about myself, one of which is choosing my pressing needs over my wants, it's the simplest life I'm living so far, and I'm super proud of it.
All humans aren't the same, it's our personality and our way of life that makes us different; being a minimalist doesn't make everyone a minimalist; imagine someone who isn't a minimalist having an encounter with an actual minimalist. What's gonna happen? Disagreements and conflicts are bound to rise.
So I've had a personal encounter with someone over my minimal lifestyle recently. So this person isn't like a very close friend of mine. We met, and we felt a little connection and started talking, and then our friendship grew a little to an extent. One day we went to the shopping mall to get some toiletries, when we got there, we started picking out the things we needed, after a while I noticed she was picking some strange things that I hadn't seen her use before, I paused for a while and asked her "why she was picking all those things" and in her words "I wanna try it" I went further to ask "is this something you need?" She replied, "No".
Then I was like "If you don't need then why are you picking it" Immediately she got angry and started raising her voice and asked if I was the one paying for it, I became speechless till the whole shopping process was over, when we got to the house, I tried to explain certain things to her about her extravagant lifestyle and how important making certain choices are, you don't buy things because others have it, I told her to prioritize her needs over her want.
After saying those I noticed the anger being in her face, and the next words she uttered were "I know you don't like spending your money because you are greedy" After hearing these I became pissed but I didn't want to have a physical encounter with her, so I just stood up, packed my portion of the items I bought and went home. After that day, I decided to maintain my lane to avoid any rift or conflict with her concerning our lifestyle.
Being a minimalist doesn't mean I don't want to spend my money. Well, I do spend my money, but the only difference is that " I spend consciously".
Thanks for reading❤