One of the notions of minimalism that I’m really in tune with is the idea of making more room in my life for the things that are really important to me. I’m an anti-clutter guy, so while getting rid of physical objects that have been sitting in a drawer untouched for five years does provide a tangible sense of purging unnecessary things from my life, it’s not like those objects sitting hidden in a drawer are actively preventing me from living a more mindful life. And while I do want of curb my consumerist lifestyle and to stop buying stuff, I have no real interest in living my life with less than 100 items or any of the popular benchmarks that can sometimes distract from the more important concepts of a minimalist lifestyle.

Getting rid of physical objects is easy. Ok, it wasn’t easy when I got started; I found reasons why I was keeping those items with an inch of dust on them “just in case.” But once I started to put things in to the donation bin, I found that it got easier and easier to do. I’m almost done with my first pass through the basement and boxes of DVDs that I never watch, CDs that I never listen to, and books that I’ve read and likely won’t read again. Because of my mildly obsessive, addictive personally, I’ll soon be opening up every drawer in every room of the house looking for other items that I can get rid of until either there is nothing left or my very patient wife puts her foot down as I try to get rid of our furniture.

Getting rid of physical objects is easy, though, compared to getting rid of the intangibles, the time wasters and filler activities that are often easier than exerting effort to do what’s more important. After a long day at work, it’s easier to sit on the couch and grab the television remote than it is to run around the yard playing soccer with the kids. It’s easier to sit the kids in front of the television, too, than it is to be engaged with them by playing a board game. It’s easier and a “more mindless” way of relaxing to play a game on a smart phone instead of reading a book.

It’s so easy to fill our lives with these distractions instead of filling our lives with what’s actually important because we reinforce these behaviors every day, and have for some time. They’re bad habits that are difficult to break. But we also set up our environments to enable our continuation of these bad habits instead of encouraging better, new habits. The remote for the television is within arms reach from the couch that I sit on almost every day, but my sketch pad is in another room. Smart phones are a source of endless distraction and they are always nearby, much closer than a book, or a board game. The more I think about it, the more I find that I’ve made it more convenient to fill my life with distractions than it is to fill it with, well, living, and connecting, and being present and mindful.

Instead of continuing the behavior, I’m going to look for ways to make it less convenient to distract myself. I’ll leave my phone on the island in the kitchen instead of carrying it around the house with me. I’ll put the remote over by the television instead of leaving it on the couch where it’s easy to grab. I’ll move my sketch pad, guitar, and a book for myself and my son in to the living room, right next to the couch. Sure, some days I’ll still get up and grab the remote. But maybe most days I won’t, and that’s a pretty good goal.

There are reminders all around me of why I’m on this journey to change the way that I have lived and trying to find and follow a more fulfilling, rewarding, and deliberate path. Last weekend a coworker of mine was killed in an accident. He and I had talked on Friday and I was thinking about him on my way to work on Monday, only to find out that he was gone. I’ve passed his cube every day this week, catching glimpses of items on his wall that included pictures of his family on his wall and numbers from the various marathons he’s run. He loved to run, and in a twist of fate he died running, too. I hope his last memory was of running, the feeling and the joy he got as his lungs filled with air. I hope my last memory will be doing something I love, and of all the time I spent in my life doing what I loved with my wife, my son, and my family and friends. I hope that for all of you, too.

Life is fragile. Life is short. Life longs to be lived, not filled with distractions. As Thoreau wrote,

I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die Discover that I had not lived.