Minimalists create a purpose-driven life based on dynamic individual needs.
The great challenge for any minimalist is to organise a life that can fulfil the changing needs of the individual and his or her familial [see photo].
The model that comes to mind is that of the Emergence Ward in any modern hospital. The key features of this interventionist management system are trust and cooperation.
It works like this. The patient enters the system. The first person on the scene takes charge and everyone else simply binds onto the progress being made at that point. The striking thing about this system is that the first leaders of this process may be a junior intern and the last one might be a senior surgeon. The trust and cooperation between these colleagues, of all strips and levels of competence, ensures that the patient's immediate needs are met by the individual and collective expertise assembled at the time.
I recall my friend telling me of just such a circumstance that he landed in as a junior intern. He was first to view a patient who was covered in blood. She was not speaking at the moment of his examination. For the life of him, he could not determine where all this blood was coming from. He told me that it was the most horrific scene he ever encountered. His immediate action was to request the assistance of a nurse and begin to remove the blood from his patient. At the end of that process he discovered that she had no flesh wounds. Later he discovered that the blood was from someone else involved in the accident and none of it came from her. His patient had suffered a mild concussion but nothing else.
This Emergence Ward system works because the focus is on the needs of the patient.
As a minimalist you are the patient. Your needs are paramount. Thus you must create a support system that is flexible, robust, trustworthy, and cooperative with others. Your minimalist system must come from first principles that work consistently across every aspect of your life [home, work, and community].
As a minimalist you are the patient in terms of your needs; but, you are also a patient's advocate for others. In the latter role you will cooperate with others to help them get their most pressing needs met. Of course this role that will expand as you become more confident with your own version of minimalism. Indeed it may often surprise you how often you are thrust into the role of the trusted leader for a cooperative process.
In fact this will happen more and more as others show their respect, and trust, in you as an independent thinker. They will also come to admire the fact that you practice what you preach. And they will learn to fully cooperate with you because you do not seek to impose your beliefs onto others.
Richard.
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