{"id":53,"date":"2020-12-13T05:00:02","date_gmt":"2020-12-13T05:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.harvard.edu\/hamzakhan\/?p=53"},"modified":"2021-11-25T19:58:49","modified_gmt":"2021-11-25T19:58:49","slug":"on-minimalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hamzakhan\/2020\/12\/13\/on-minimalism\/","title":{"rendered":"On minimalism"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><span style=\"font-family: 'arial black', sans-serif\">You don&#8217;t need much to survive, just look a few years back<\/span><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">\u201cNothing can satisfy greed, but even a small measure satisfies nature. So it is that the poverty of<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">an exile brings no misfortune, for no place of exile is so barren as not to produce ample support for a person.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">\u2014SENECA, ON CONSOLATION TO HELVIA, 10.11b<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">It can be beneficial to reflect on what you used to accept as normal. Consider your first paycheck\u2014how big it seemed then. Or your first apartment, with its own bedroom and bathroom and the ramen you gladly scarfed down in the kitchen. Today, as you\u2019ve become more successful, these conditions would hardly feel sufficient. In fact, you probably want even more than what you have right now. Yet just a few years ago those paltry conditions were not only enough, they felt great!<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">When we become successful, we forget how strong we used to be. We are so used to what we have, we half believe we\u2019d die without it. Of course, this is just the comfort talking. In the days of the world wars, our parents and grandparents made do with rationed gas, butter, and electricity. They were fine, just as you have been fine when you had less.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">Remember today that you\u2019d be OK if things suddenly went wrong. Your actual needs are small. There is very little that could happen that would truly threaten your survival. Think about that\u2014and adjust your worries and fears accordingly<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif\">Daily stoic<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You don&#8217;t need much to survive, just look a few years back \u201cNothing can satisfy greed, but even a small measure satisfies nature. So it is that the poverty of an exile brings no misfortune, for no place of exile is so barren as not to produce ample support for a person.\u201d \u2014SENECA, ON CONSOLATION [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9898,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[290660],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-character"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hamzakhan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hamzakhan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hamzakhan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hamzakhan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9898"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hamzakhan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hamzakhan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":188,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hamzakhan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions\/188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hamzakhan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hamzakhan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hamzakhan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}