Sometimes I catch myself idealizing everything. Relationships, work, personal projects. I get lost in a perfect version of things that rarely matches what’s actually in front of me. And the more I idealize, the more frustrated I get. Because reality doesn’t bend to my mental projections. It’s not that having ideals is wrong, but living from them without grounding in the real world can be the perfect recipe for paralysis.
However, when I started exploring minimalism, something shifted. I stopped chasing so much and started seeing more. Minimalism isn’t just about throwing things away; it’s about honestly observing what’s really there. It’s reducing the noise—not just around me, but within me. It helped me stop thinking so much about how things should be and more about how they actually are.
On the other hand, idealism has a subtle trap: it promises clarity while creating disorder. It pushes us to build impossible standards that blur our ability to analyze, decide, and act critically. It’s like decorating a room so much that you can’t even walk through it anymore. We end up lost in brilliant theories that solve nothing in practice.
Moreover, when we filter life through the lens of idealism, we stop solving. We’d rather imagine solutions we never implement. That’s where minimalism, as a life philosophy, steps in as a quiet rebellion: it pushes us to make space, to focus on what matters, and most importantly, to act from clarity rather than illusion.
Finally, I realized that everyday life doesn’t need more perfection—it needs more presence. And for that, less idealism and more minimalism. Less fantasy, more substance. Because thinking critically also means knowing when to let go of a beautiful idea that doesn’t work, and holding on to the simple things that actually do.
All photographs and content used in this post are my own. Therefore, they have been used under my permission and are my property.
