In reality, I dream....

I dream of a small little house in the mountains sometimes.

A small little house with only a bedroom or two, with frilly curtains and piles of books on the floor, a handmade dining table and rusty kitchenware lining the shelves. Mismatched plates, cups and spoons, pillowcases and bed sheets; just the things you pick up when you leave home, not the shiny things you buy from pleasant-smelling shops that cost more money than they should.

I dream of a small place, a place full of comfort that lingers with the smell of wildflowers and forests, a place where dawn breaks in a lull, with no need of rushing, because there is no place to be rushing towards, nothing to hurry for. A garden full of self-accomplishments and an easel full of colours; to me, these are the things a minimalistic life is made of. But in the end, dreams are just that, dreams; they vanish whenever I open my eyes, and then reality creeps in once more.

City life, often times is suffocating for me. I hate the dusty roads and smoke-infused air I’m forced to breathe in. Here, there is no time to stop and sit, no time to listen, and every single minute feels like a never-ending race where everyone is running, with no finish line in sight.

This hard, and often time heartless reality is what keeps me from living my life like I want to. A small house in the mountain does sound nice in a dream, but in reality, even getting that small house nowadays costs a small amount of fortune, which I do not yet have. So I run like the others do, in hopes that one day I’ll have just enough to leave this all behind and never look back.

It's a sad truth, but money is another thing that keeps me from living my life in a minimalistic way. I know that minimalism doesn’t require much, and I myself don’t require anything really. Just a small house by the mountains is my only dream. But in reality, I have a family to take care of, mouths to feed, and broken desires to mend along the way. Responsibilities aren’t something that I can turn off like a light switch, so these things come before anything that I do, and I find myself in complicated situations at times, where my mind turns into a jungle of emotions and enquiries, of desires and desperations, of questions with no answers.

I don’t dream of lavish lifestyles. I know those things are just not meant for me. As a person who got by with the minimum, too much of anything doesn’t suit me at all. So I don’t even dream of it. All I dream of is that house in the mountains, and what pushes me forward are simple things, really; proud smiles on my parents' lips, contentment in their eyes and a heart that is happy. I think that's enough to push forward for.

Huh… I just noticed that, while being a minimalist thinker, I tend to write very messily. That’s another expectation vs reality situation going on with me. But I wouldn’t really change this one, to be honest. Some things are better kept the way they are.