Perfectly Imperfect

This is our third and final essay in this month’s deep dive into minimalism at the Kahu Advocacy Foundation. Next month, we’ll wander off into a new philosophy to reduce suffering. But for now, we want to end this chapter with the most important question minimalism asks:

How do we travel light through life?

Not just “how do I fit everything into cabin luggage on IndiGo,” but how do we move through this one strange human lifetime with less weight on our backs i.e material, mental, emotional, and spiritual?

To warm up, let’s start with a man who literally refused to wear shoes.

Socrates, like many philosophers of antiquity, lived a frugal life. Few possessions, no footwear, no Amazon wish-list. And yet, he loved the marketplace. He would go there regularly, just to wander around and look at things. One day, a friend asked him why he visited so often if he never bought anything. Socrates replied:

“I love going there to look at all the things I’m perfectly happy without.”

This is probably the most hardcore anti-EMI flex in history. In our world, the market is designed to show us everything we are supposedly incomplete without. Socrates used the market to marvel at how complete he felt already. If he lived in India today, he’d probably stroll through a mall, admire 40-inch screens and ₹10,000 sneakers, and go home to drink chai from a chipped cup with exactly the same peace of mind.

When we think of “traveling light”, we usually picture holidays: one backpack, two T‑shirts, no 23-kg suitcase that you regret the moment you reach the third-floor homestay with no lift. Light baggage makes travel easier. You move faster, you’re more flexible, you pay fewer luggage fees, and you don’t spend half your trip worrying about where your stuff is.

Now imagine using that same logic, not just for a three-day trip to Goa, but for your entire life.

What would it mean to “travel light” through existence?

Our myths have already warned us what happens when we travel heavy. King Midas is basically the original “everything is an asset” guy. Obsessed with gold, he asked the god Dionysus for the power to turn everything he touched into gold. At first, it was amazing: trees, cups, furniture. he was  blinding wealth everywhere. Then his food turned to gold. His drink turned to gold. Finally, his beloved daughter turned to gold.

That’s when Midas realised his “upgrade” had destroyed everything that mattered.

We may not be turning our children into metal, but the pattern is familiar. We tell ourselves our desire for stuff is just “self-preservation”: hoarding groceries “just in case”, buying a slightly bigger house because “future children, guests, parents’ visits,” overfilling our fridge because “what if someone drops in?”. At some point, reasonable security quietly mutates into full-blown greed or anxiety.

We all know a hoarder. Sometimes, it’s us. Sometimes, it’s our parents. Your mother might be that legendary figure who has every possible object you didn’t know you’d ever need. Want to shorten your kurta sleeves? There’s a sewing machine, three types of thread, and spare buttons. Want to do ad-hoc stone grilling for some reason? She has the stones, the grill, the skewers. Renovating a bus into a mobile home? Somehow, she has material for that too.

This has its benefits. But there’s a line after which “I’m prepared for anything” quietly becomes “I live under a mountain of junk.” On the wealthier end, this shows up as villas with pools no one uses, ten bedrooms for four people, enough cars to open a showroom. Owning a lot can feel convenient: why go out when there’s a pool at home? Why travel when your house is a resort?

The problem is the hidden cost. That big villa doesn’t just sit there looking pretty. It needs security because you’ve just painted a target on your back. It needs cleaning, repairs, electricity, staff. The lawns must be trimmed, the pool cleaned, the ACs serviced. And you have to keep making enough money to maintain the very thing you bought for “comfort”.

Even at a smaller scale, the pattern is similar. A couple stretches to buy a house at the edge of their budget. Two incomes become mandatory to pay the mortgage. They’ve achieved the great Indian dream of “owning a home” and in the same breath handcuff themselves to it. The house is now not just shelter; it’s a non-negotiable monthly demand. The phrase “millstone around the neck” starts to feel very accurate.

Epicurus, the ancient Greek philosopher who’s been acting as our unofficial financial therapist this month, put it simply: no pleasure is evil in itself, but some pleasures bring annoyances much greater than the pleasure they deliver. A massive house may be pleasant but if it demands a life of stress, overwork, and zero flexibility, was the trade really worth it?

This idea shows up beautifully in an unlikely place: the video game Skyrim. In the game, you can collect all sorts of loot like armour, swords, herbs, cheese wedges. The more you collect, the heavier you become, and the slower you move. Cross a certain limit, and you can’t move at all. You are literally “overencumbered.”

Real life is not that different. Every possession demands some maintenance: cleaning, storing, insuring, protecting, remembering. The things we acquire to serve us quietly begin to dictate our schedules. As Tyler Durden in Fight Club said, “The things you own end up owning you. It’s only after you’ve lost everything that you’re free to do anything.”

And it isn’t just physical stuff that weighs us down. Psychological baggage can be even heavier. Worries about the future, regrets about the past, looping stories about how we were wronged, unresolved trauma. Desires that burn and won’t switch off. Aversions that make us tense every time a certain person enters the room.

Desire itself has a particular heaviness. Wanting something implies a lack. It tugs at the mind, disturbs our contentment, and keeps whispering, “Not yet. Not enough. Not this.” Aversion is just desire wearing its clothes inside-out: “I want this not to happen. I want this person not to exist. I want this experience to disappear.”

When our minds are full of strong desires and strong aversions, we move through life like overloaded donkeys. There is nothing light about constantly craving and constantly resisting. The moments we feel lightest are usually the moments we feel content i.e when, even briefly, we don’t want anything in particular and aren’t fighting reality.

Different traditions have tried to cure this heaviness in their own ways. Stoicism teaches us to challenge irrational thoughts and detach from things outside our control, including material possessions and other people’s opinions. Buddhism trains the mind to observe its own craving and aversion and slowly loosen their grip through meditation. Christianity has confession, a ritualised way of unburdening guilt and shame. In Islam, many believers remind themselves that wealth cannot be taken into the afterlife; over-attachment to it is seen as a distraction from God.

Across these traditions, one theme keeps repeating: non-attachment. You can use things, enjoy things, be steward of things but the minute your sense of self and sanity depends on them, they own you. The Stoic Epictetus even warned that you cannot pursue wisdom seriously and, at the same time, be deeply attached to small material comforts. You choose your direction.

So what does it look like to actually travel light?

One version looks like the digital nomad cliché, but with a philosophical twist. Picture someone who works remotely. They travel slowly, staying in one place for weeks or months, living out of a small suitcase and a bag. A laptop, a mic, a few clothes, some basic gear, that’s it. When they dislike a place, they pack up and leave. Almost everything they need fits into what they can carry.

There’s a specific feeling that comes when you realise: “I can function with this little.” It’s not deprivation; it’s relief. As if nothing material has its claws deeply in you. It’s the opposite of being nailed to one city, one house, one job purely because you’ve accumulated too much to move.

India has always had its own version of this figure: the wandering sadhu with a cloth, a bowl, maybe a book. The idea was the same: reduce possessions so that your energy is free for inner work. In 2025, your version might be a backpack and a half-decent Wi‑Fi connection, but the impulse is the same.

Still, you can have just one suitcase and remain a mental hoarder. That’s why the ultimate form of traveling light is not in your cupboard, but between your ears. If your mind is crowded with anxiety, unprocessed hurt, endless ambition, and perfectionism, then even an empty room will feel suffocating.

This brings us to the other big trap minimalism is rebelling against: the cult of pleasure and the cult of perfection.

We live in a world that has confused “pleasure” with “happiness” and “perfection” with “worth.” Ads show impossibly attractive people drinking something cold on a beach, laughing as if they’ve never known a bad hair day or a corrupt landlord. Instagram floods us with filtered faces, sculpted bodies, immaculate homes, exotic holidays, genius children. The message, blaring at full volume, is: “This is what your life should look like. Anything less is failure.”

We respond by tweaking everything. Our faces, our diets, our wardrobes, our CVs, our homes. We chase pleasure as if happiness and pleasure are the same thing. If one vacation felt good, surely three a year will make us even happier. If one treat felt nice, daily treats will be better. If one compliment felt good, a thousand likes will be bliss.

But they aren’t.

Arthur Schopenhauer, champion pessimist of Europe, made a rather rude observation: satisfaction, he said, is not a positive experience. It’s negative. Not “negative” as in “bad”, but “negative” as in “removal.” In his view, every joy is simply the ending of some discomfort. You’re hungry; you eat; the discomfort ends. You’re lonely; you see a friend; the discomfort eases. We burn with desire, we run around extinguishing the fire, and then feel relief. That relief is what we’re calling “happiness.”

The problem is, as soon as one fire is put out, another ignites. Schopenhauer calls this endless inner push the “will to live”, a blind, irrational drive that keeps generating new desires. Advertisers simply add petrol to it. They convince us that on top of our natural needs, we also require a hundred new things: new gadgets, new experiences, new lifestyles. Our sense of lack grows. Our “baseline dissatisfaction” increases. We have to work harder just to reach what feels like zero.

Ajahn Sona, a Buddhist monk, explains desire in a down-to-earth way: the moment you want something, he says, you are in debt. Before wanting, you were just there. Now, instantly, there is a gap, a bill to be paid before you can feel at peace again. When you finally pay off a loan, you feel light and free. Desire is like continuously taking new loans.

Do we really want the objects themselves? Or do we want the end of the itch that those objects temporarily scratch?

Think of a time you deeply wanted a new phone. For days, maybe weeks, it occupied your mind. You researched, compared, watched reviews, imagined how great it will feel. Then you bought it. For a few days, you were thrilled. Then it became “my phone”. The desire ended and with it, a certain excitement. Soon, a new model appears, the itch returns, and the cycle continues.

It looks suspiciously like we don’t actually want what we want. We just want to stop wanting all the time.

Consumerism, then, is a tragedy wearing a smiley face. It promises us happiness through ever-more intense pleasures and ever-closer approaches to perfection. In reality, it creates more lack, more comparison, more debt financial and emotional. The fire burns hotter; the water we’re sold to douse it gets more expensive.

How do we respond?

We have three main options, each with its own drama.

One: fully embrace consumerism. Work more, earn more, buy more, scroll more, upgrade more, and hope that somehow the treadmill will become enjoyable if we run fast enough. Many people do this until their health, relationships, or sanity give out. Sometimes all three.

Two: try to eliminate desire altogether. Become an ascetic. Renounce, retreat, meditate 10 hours a day, live on alms, and attempt to silence the will that keeps demanding things. Some Buddhist monks and sadhus take this route. It is noble. For most of us, it is also wildly unrealistic.

Three: seek a middle way. Enjoy pleasure, but don’t worship it. Use money, but don’t sell your life to it. Improve yourself, but don’t make perfection your god. This is where minimalism, Epicureanism, and a bit of Stoicism meet.

Epicurus suggests we stop glorifying big, expensive pleasures and start enjoying small, simple ones. Instead of looking for satisfaction in shopping malls, power lunches, and luxury resorts, he recommends bread, cheese, water, and good conversation with friends. He categorises our desires into natural and necessary (food, shelter, basic safety), natural but not necessary (fancy food, huge houses, extensive social circles), and vain (fame, extreme wealth, power). His advice: focus on the first category, be careful with the second, and treat the third like a suspicious aunty at a wedding: smile politely, but keep your distance.

He also tells us, “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” Gratitude, in his view, is not a moral performance; it’s a cheap, efficient way to reduce desire. You don’t need an extra shift at work to enjoy the sunlight already falling on your balcony.

Schopenhauer adds that intellectual pleasures like reading, thinking, learning, listening to music, observing nature and are among the cheapest, safest sources of happiness we have. Books can be borrowed. Libraries are either inexpensive or free. The internet, despite being a circus, also contains oceans of wisdom that cost nothing but your attention. A taste for these pleasures gives you a lifelong source of relatively low-cost, low-risk satisfaction, accessible even when you’re old, broke, or stuck at home during a lockdown.

The Stoic Epictetus uses a different image: treat life like a banquet. When a dish comes your way, you take a reasonable amount. You don’t clutch the server’s sleeve and howl because the dessert is on the other side of the room. You don’t stretch across the table, knocking things over for a taste of every platter. And if a dish passes by and you don’t get any, you don’t throw a fit. Sometimes, you even practise saying no to what’s offered, just to remember that you are not a slave to your appetite.

Every time we indulge a desire, we strengthen it. Every time we let a desire come and go without obeying it, we weaken it. We may never banish craving completely, but we can certainly reduce the volume. The less we burn with “I must have this”, the less we need pleasure to rescue us from our own minds.

The other half of this middle way is making peace with imperfection.

Right now, perfectionism is treated almost like a virtue. We are supposed to have perfect bodies, families, careers, relationships, wardrobes, vacations. Our weddings must be cinematic. Our homes must look like furniture catalogue spreads. Our faces must be ready for HD closeups at all times. If there’s a crack in your wall, a stain on your kurta, a little belly over your jeans, a bit of mess in your room, something in you whispers, “Not good enough.”

The Japanese sensibility of wabi-sabi quietly laughs at this.

Wabi-sabi, rooted in Zen Buddhism, embraces simplicity, impermanence, and imperfection. In fifteenth-century Japan, the elite loved to show off wealth with elaborate Chinese tea sets, rich decor, and full moons. A Zen monk named Murata Shukō thought this was missing the point. He simplified the tea ceremony: simple local cups instead of imported luxury, partial or clouded moon instead of perfect full moon, natural materials, irregular shapes, signs of wear.

Over time, the ceremony became a tribute to the transient, imperfect nature of life: chipped cups, rough textures, shadows, silence.

“Wabi” now refers to plain, simple things, often rough, asymmetrical, rustic, like objects in nature. “Sabi” refers to the beauty of things touched by time: weathered wood, faded cloth, rust, cracks. Wabi-sabi is less a strict philosophy and more an experience and a soft, clear awareness of how fleeting and flawed everything is, and how that is not a problem but a strange kind of beauty.

Plato argued that perfection can exist only in ideas, not in physical reality. You might imagine an ideal circle, but every circle you draw will be slightly off. Add to that the fact that everything in the universe is in flux which is aging, cracking, decaying and the dream of a flawless, permanent state becomes obviously impossible.

Lao Tzu captured the absurdity of chasing it: it’s easier to carry an empty cup than one filled to the brim; the sharper the knife, the easier to dull; the more wealth you possess, the harder it is to protect. The closer we get to “perfection,” the more fragile, tense, and anxious we become. Keep your living room in a state of spotless perfection, and a single misplaced slipper can ruin your day. Keep your life curated like an Instagram feed, and one bad photo or off day can feel like a catastrophe.

Wabi-sabi suggests we stop fighting the fact that everything falls apart. Aging, asymmetry, crookedness, damage, decay, death: these are not glitches in an otherwise smooth system; they are the system. Buddhist thought calls these the three marks of existence: impermanence, suffering (or dissatisfaction), and emptiness (no fixed, permanent self).

Clinging to an idea of how things “should” be is what creates dukkha, which is our deep, itchy dissatisfaction. Perfectionism is just a sophisticated form of clinging: we nail our self-worth to some fantasy image, then suffer when reality refuses to comply. Addiction, for instance, can be seen as a desperate bid to achieve a perfectly painless state. Ironically, that refusal to accept normal pain creates far worse suffering.

The Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius had his own wabi-sabi moment. He wrote about how loaves of bread split open in the oven: the cracked ridges are technically “imperfections,” yet somehow appetizing. Ripe figs bursting, olives about to fall, the shadow of decay on fruit .These, he said, have a peculiar beauty. They are most themselves when they are closest to changing form.

We don’t usually look at ourselves that way. One wrinkle on the forehead, one grey hair, and panic sets in. But from a wabi-sabi perspective, we are most deeply part of the world precisely in our imperfect, aging, slightly chaotic state.

So how does this connect back to minimalism and traveling light?

One practical expression of wabi-sabi is a very different kind of minimalism. Not the Instagram variant, where everything is symmetrical and white and absurdly expensive. Wabi-sabi minimalism is simpler, more relaxed. You make an honest inventory of what you have, remove what you truly don’t need, and cherish what remains. You don’t instantly replace a slightly worn but comfortable sofa with a designer one just because it photographs better. You accept mismatched chairs, a mug with a crack, walls with a bit of peeling paint. You might decorate with pine cones, pieces of wood, or shells picked up on walks, instead of buying yet another decor item from a lifestyle store.

Your house becomes a home, not a showroom.

Beth Kempton, in her book on wabi-sabi, puts it nicely: wabi-sabi gives you permission to be yourself. It encourages you to do your best without making yourself ill chasing an impossible standard. It gently invites you to slow down, relax, and find beauty in unlikely places. In Indian terms, it’s the philosophy that tells you it’s okay that your grandmother’s steel dabba doesn’t “match the aesthetic,” and that your life has value even if your bedsheet isn’t perfectly ironed for Instagram.

One way to taste wabi-sabi directly is through “forest-bathing”: walking slowly in nature with no agenda. No steps to count, no photos to post, no destination to reach. Just paying attention to crooked trees, fallen leaves, cracked rocks, changing light. In India, this could be a slow walk under gulmohar trees, a lazy evening at the beach watching broken shells and imperfect waves, wandering through a dusty park instead of another climate-controlled mall.

Nature operates without perfectionism. It grows, decays, regenerates. Nothing matches. Nothing is permanent. Yet we rarely look at a hillside and think, “Ugh, why is that rock chipped?” We reserve that cruelty for ourselves and our homes.

When we combine minimalism, Epicurus’s simple pleasures, Schopenhauer’s cheap intellectual joys, Stoic moderation, and wabi-sabi’s acceptance of imperfection, “traveling light” starts to take shape:

We own fewer things, so we drag less material weight.
We chase fewer pleasures, so we generate less fire to keep putting out.
We hold fewer fantasies of perfection, so reality doesn’t disappoint us as violently.
We accept ourselves and others as “in progress,” so we can spend less time editing and more time living.

And what does any of this have to do with Kahu’s mission of reducing suffering for all sentient life?

Quite a lot.

When we are less entangled in possessions, desires, and performance, we free resources like time, attention, money, emotional bandwidth that can flow into care. Care for animals. Care for ecosystems. Care for overworked humans and neglected elders. Care for our own fragile bodies and minds. We consume less, so our footprint is lighter. We compare less, so our envy and aggression soften. We rebel, quietly but powerfully, against a system that thrives on our dissatisfaction.

This concludes our month with minimalism. In the first essay, we explored simplicity as a power move and quiet revolution. In the second, we looked at money, desire, and how being rich can actually be quite cheap if we stop letting consumerism write the script. In this final piece, we’ve tried to gather the threads into one image: traveling light through life so that we can walk more freely, respond more kindly, and suffer a little less.

Next month, we’ll turn to a new philosophy or idea in our ongoing experiment at Kahu: to learn, together, how to reduce suffering in this beautifully messy world. Minimalism will still be here in the background, like Socrates in the marketplace, quietly reminding us of all the things we are already perfectly happy without.



Further Reading

Digital minimalism and attention

Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
On using technology intentionally instead of being used by it
Amazon India
https://www.amazon.in/s?k=Digital+Minimalism+Cal+Newport

Deep Work by Cal Newport
Companion idea to digital minimalism how to focus deeply by cutting noise
Amazon India
https://www.amazon.in/s?k=Deep+Work+Cal+Newport

How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell
Critique of the attention economy and a call to reclaim our time and attention
Amazon India
https://www.amazon.in/s?k=How+to+Do+Nothing+Jenny+Odell