“To hurry and worry through your day is to take an unopened gift and throw it away.” This line from David Weatherford’s “Slow Dance” elucidates a reality that many acknowledge years too late. Do I hurry and worry not just through a day but through an entire life? Life is often spent hurrying towards the next worry, which leads a person exactly where he or she expected: at the next worry. Too many of these worries are the result of contrived societal norms and comparison with others, the supreme killer of joy. From thinking on this issue and reading the thoughts of others, primarily Tim Ferriss and Balaji Srinivasan, I have come to the conclusion that the solution to this omnipresent problem of lives spent hurrying and worrying is to become a post-economic minimalist. It is through the attainment of this wordy title that one can truly live.

To be post-economic is 1) to achieve a freedom from the necessity to think about finances for any of one’s everyday needs and 2) to achieve a freedom from the necessity to fear the finances required for extraneous emergency events (an unexpected illness, etc). If a person is post-economic, he or she can control his or her life and live that life on his or her own terms, not beholden to the need to sacrifice one’s life in order to survive day-to-day.

To be a minimalist is to reject anything that does not add direct value to life, with an emphasis on the elimination of mental and physical clutter that can hinder someone from pursuing experiences and passions. It is a complete rejection of the need to “keep up with the Joneses.” It is an exchange of more things and more items for more time and more space to think. It is a way to spend more life with the people one loves instead of the things one thinks he or she needs.

By combining the goal of becoming post-economic with a minimalist lifestyle in which a person rids life of useless material possessions, one can live a life pursuing the ideas, challenges, and experiences one truly cares about. The possessions cast off are often the very chains that shackle people to their incessant hamster wheels. The goal: Become post-economic while maintaining minimalist principles and focusing on that which truly matters as opposed to the typical snares of the post-economic life. It is through this freedom that one can form the life and the world one seeks.

-Charlie, September 2023