This is optimal living daily episode 401, an excerpt from the audiobook essential, essays by the minimalist by Joshua Fields Milburn and Ryan Nicodemus, and I'm Justin Mollick. This is normally where I read you from the best blogs on the planet. Today's a little weird, I'm on a different microphone and not in my usual recording space. But this is a good thing, I finally finished the audiobook everything that remains for the minimalist.
I want to cry, it took way longer than expected, it's a beast of a book, in a good way, but it's finally done. I can't even imagine what it's like writing the book and being done with it because just narrating it and editing it and remarinating it and re-editing it felt like a massive project. But anyway, I finished today so I'm kind of celebrating and taking yet another day to play you excerpts from their other book that I did for them. Now don't go out and look for it yet though because they need to submit it and have it approved and all that stuff.
I'll let you know what's available. Or if you're listening in the future sometime after January 2017, then you can check it out and I'd hope it's available by then. So with that, here's more from the minimalist as we optimize your life. An excerpt from the audiobook essential, essays by the minimalist by Joshua Fields Milburn and Ryan Nicodemus.
Untieters. The more experienced we are, the more unlearning we must do. We enter this world as creators, curious to discover ways to express ourselves visually, auditorily, kinestatically. Over time though, we are taught to be more realistic, to be safe and reasonable and normal.
We never wanted to be safe or reasonable. Maybe we wanted to be normal, but today's normality template is far from what most of us had in mind at age 5. Growing up, we all just wanted to be ourselves. That was normal.
Soon we were placed in the classroom, told to stand in line, speak when spoken to, and prescribed ADHD medication if we got out of line. This methodology worked great for creating factory workers and farmers, which seemed ideal when 90% of the population was either the farmer or the latter. Today however, most people are neither factory workers nor farmers. And even those positions have changed radically in the past few decades.
And yet we are all graced with the assembly line mentality, systematically programmed for compliance, expected to adhere to external standards while disregarding whatever our own internal normal was. During this process, our creativity is quashed and replaced with a vast emptiness, but desired to create even though we are told we are not creative. It's no coincidence we start focusing more on consuming around the same time, looking for any material thing to fill the void. Quote, all children are artists.
The problem is how to remain an artist once it grows up, unquote. Picasso had this observation a century ago, and unfortunately these words ring even truer in today's post-industrial world, a world where our vocations no longer ape the form of creation, a la farming and factoring, and thus the gap between creation and consumption widens as we attempt to buy what no one can possibly sell, individual creativity. The strange thing about this antiquated system is that most of its gatekeepers, government officials, school administrators and teachers aren't operating out of malice. Their reaction is birds from apathy, comfort or both.
Many teachers are just as disenchanting with the whole mess as we are, although they often feel like just another faceless cog in the wheel powerless amongst the tyranny of bureaucracy. Thankfully, there are alternatives. For children, there's homeschooling, unschooling and wonderful programs like 826 Valencia. For adults, options are endless.
There are books, blogs, classes, conferences. Plus there are scores of people like us, the minimalists. People who've rejected the system and align their lives with their values and beliefs, who function not as teachers but as un-teachers, helping people unlearn the bullets they've acquired over the years so they too can become un-teachers and help further the spread of creativity and ideas. None of these alternatives are easy, but then again it is way too easy to stand in line, to raise a hand we want to speak, to blindly follow authority, to capitulate and above all to comply.
Screw that. The easy road is easy because it's a vacuum, devoid of meaning, vacant. It also lacks innovation and beauty and all the unspeakable qualities that make life exhilarating and worth living. The scenic route takes longer to travel, but the experience is worth it.
Also worth reading, Seth Godin's free manifesto, Stop Ceiling Dreams at StopceilingDreams.com. Un-American Dream. The American Dream. The White Pick offense.
The large suburban home. The luxury car. The big screen TVs glowing in multiple rooms. The safe reasonable 9-5.
The corner office. The suit and tie. The white collar pride. The blue collar pride.
The weekends off. The paid holidays. The occasional vacation. The fringe benefits.
In exchange for the daily grind. The nose to the grindstone. The rush hour traffic. The punching the clock.
The cubicle farms. The spreadsheet eye strain. The much anticipated lunch break. The inbox overflow.
The arbitrary goals. The late nights at the office. The empty platitudes. The office gossip.
The quote unquote productivity. The downsizing. The doing more with less. The mounds of bills.
The second job. The credit card spending. The debt. The second mortgage.
The beer gut. The midlife crisis. The retirement at 65. The volatile stock market.
The retirement at 67. Or 72. Or 75. The death before retirement.
The unyielding tiredness. The emptiness. The depression. The unshakable discontent.
You can keep your American Dream. Give us back our time, our freedom, and our lives. You just listened to an excerpt from the audiobook essential essays by the minimalist by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus. And I should be back with fresh content tomorrow.
Thank you for being here and for all your support while I try to do four podcasts and three audiobooks. It's been crazy and I appreciate you listening. It means so much. I'm kind of emotional because all three audiobooks are done and it took a long time.
Probably like nine months, which might sound absurd, but I should have expected it with all the other podcasts I'm making. I just hope you're benefiting from this. So that's it for today. I hope you're having a great weekend and I'll see you tomorrow, where your optimal life awaits.
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