I Want Less

I want less. I want less corruption, control. I want to soften the lines. Soften the rigidity of my mind to let my spirit expand. I want less to cover what truly is. I want less things, less material to convince my psyche that it is “okay” or thriving. I want the bold black lines to fade into soft browns. I want to soften the grip, soften often the gaze. Less augmentations. Less control. I experience more, most, when I have less. Less distractions, less to organize me into a specific box, less people crowding my being with their expectations of me. I am spiraling on fire screaming “loosen your clinging grasp on me” when I feel tethered to the weighted wants and hopes. Needing less societal configuration. Strip all away to less. Unburden me. Unburden us. Strip it away to nothing but being. Less allows more, and I am all that I want. I am my thoughts, my desires, my suffering, my liberation. I AM. And the less that I am, the more that WE are. Being.

Strip it all away, the things, the light, see yourself as the You you meet in the dark at 2 AM, the You you sing to in the car. Choose liberation of You and the rest will come. The art of this is not about how many people like you and your work, how much money, your zip code, your labels, your titles. The art is in being. Removing the mask. Unwinding the habits. The art simply IS.

There is an unburdening that comes from stripping away the extraneous layers we allow to accumulate. A peeling back of the mind's rigidity to make space for the spirit to expand into its full luminescence. Too often we spackle over the rawboned truth of our existence with unnecessary adornments and embellishments meant to conform to society's preconceived notions of worth and validation.

But worth has no metric, no quantifiable measure beyond the simple truth of being. Of existing authentically as the unfurled essence we were meant to be, rather than the intricately curated facade of what we think we should project based on external pressures and expectations. There is liberation in that unbecoming, in that unraveling of the tightly woven persona we have been stitching for others' appraisal.

To shed the attachments that leach our vitality. The accumulation of things we are convinced will fill an insatiable interior void that can only be nourished from within. To soften consumption's greedy grasp and experience life through the clarity of non-possessing. This is not deprivation, but profound nourishment for the soul.

Less is more when we have the audacity to claim our most elemental selves, to live as the selves we meet in the vulnerability of pre-dawn solitude - the self that sings with raw abandon in the quotidian thrum. The unguarded fleshiness of that nakedness is where the true art of living resides, unencumbered by society's scoreboards and posturing conventions.

We need only be, in all our gorgeous complexity of thought, desire, suffering, transcendence. We are already enough, more than enough in our delicious imperfections. The artistry lies in claiming that messy, magnificent wholeness rather than the preening compartments into which we are meant to confine our multitudes. Use just what you require from this plundered earth - the rest is pure creativity catalyzed from being fully present as your most galvanized self.

The art is not in accolades or currencies or zoning demarcations, but simply in inhaling each breath into living art itself. When we cast off the hampering accoutrements, we make galvanizing space for profound communion - to revel as kindred souls in the rune-inscribed beat of our undisguised hearts.