Thursday, October 30, 2014

Minimalism, Essentialism and, now, Boatism

The other day I came across an article about Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

As a devout wannabe minamilist, I clicked on over to Amazon and read the first few pages about some Joe who needs to be an essentialist in order to be productive and successful. Then I read a bunch of reader reviews that pretty much summarized the book. 

Verdict: you couldn't pay me to read it; it caters to the career-ladder-climbing crowd, it sounds conformist and boring and yet it's a best seller. Go figure!

I was disappointed because...I'll be blunt...today we essentially already know almost everything we kneed to know. The essential problem is that we don't act according to what we know. Because the human race has gone nuts, self-help books get lots of attention by reminding people that they've gone nutty. Reading a self-help book is sort of like masturbating. You knew that, right? 

Essentialism looks something like this river scene. I'm behind the camera.
Boating on the Tagus River
This is a very essential and focused way of doing nothing.
Might as well show you what they're looking at: a fort we visited on a river island.

And because the "Naked Boat" gig is not getting me anywhere, I thought I'd invent an "ism" of my own. That's when "Boatism" popped into my mind.

But then I Googled Boatism and, damn it, even Urban Dictionary already snagged a definition for it, as you can read, and it's worth the read, and, among other things, it says: 

"Now... 
Imagine you're sat on a boat, with everything YOU would want to make the moment absolutely PERFECT. 
This is the Boat of Perfection. 
When you realise how much you love it, become a Boatist." 

~ Urban Dictionary

But I don't care if other people have already coined the word Boatism, I'm going to claim my right to it anyway. I own a boat, I'm a boat slave, I'm a boatist and that's the way it goes. Furthermore, nobody is going to write a book about it simply because boatists are rare and very few souls would ever want to convert from whatever "ism" they're into right now.

Yeah, I had a couple glasses of wine with lunch, but I still mean every word I said, almost.