Why Live a Simple Life | How Much Is Enough?

Was it the Dalai Lama that turned around and said, you spend all your life making as much money as you can for your retirement one day, but then when you retire you're spending all that money because your health is compromised? You can spend your life out there trying to make a lot of money, always saying that one day I'm going to have a lot of money and enjoy myself. By the time one has money to burn, the fire will have died out. Lots of people they believe that adding material value to their life improves their well-being, but that's not what life is all about. What was a wonderful story? He who dies with the most poise wins. How did he live in the meantime? This gold card or that platinum card, they pull out the string of eleven cards, which one isn't matched? You can't live like that. If you try to think about what you actually need to make yourself live happily and comfortably. I want a car to get from A to B, but I don't need a Porsche. I want a roof over my head, but I don't need a four-story mansion with two pools right on the beach. How much is enough? Making enough money has been a struggle from time to time, but I don't owe any money, and I think for me that's been a big key. I've learnt to live life very simply on very little. And for a lot of my contemporaries, living like this is not normal. They'd come in here and they have a fit. There's no dishwasher, there's no microwave, everything's a bit unmodern. Never having much money has given me an advantage in that I know how to survive on a very small amount of money. And of course we need money to survive and buy food, but the real worth is to live fully, to get honest pleasure from life, not plastic pleasure, not tinsel town pleasure, just to live and enjoy simply life. You've got to enjoy your life from the word go and not making money to enjoy life. Happiness is simplicity. The less I have, the happier I am. There's a lot less to worry about. I'm not saying do away with money. I would love to get to the garage to fill up diesel in my Bucky and say, here's a cabbage. Not going to happen any day soon. So for me it's not a matter of disconnecting from society. I recognise the importance of money, I recognise the importance of everything else around us. But I also recognise that the more I had, the more unhappy I was. We live in gilded cages. We have nice houses, nice cars. We don't realise that it's a jail. I think we're so bound up with consuming, it dulls us. It closes our eyes off. So many people in life and society today worry about what the next man thinks. Follow the Joneses and keep up and I've got to have the latest phone, car, bike. We just consume, consume, consume. People go through life thinking, oh look, I'm making all these wonderful choices when they're not making any choices at all. It's all prescribed for them. I don't look at ads or newspapers because those things, they tell you that you're not good or you're not good enough because you need to buy this product, that product or you need this fashion, that fashion. We're forever in a day being told, this is what you have to aspire towards. And that's exactly what happened to me. You grow up with movies about a rags to riches tale about how you can become a high-flying manager. What they don't tell you is what you have to sell once you're there. You sell your soul. You lose who you are. Living in a world where you're constantly bombarded with trends and consumerism, it's easy to fall into that trap because people, they believe wearing that Gucci jeans is going to let them walk better. Or having the latest iPhone, they'd be able to speak louder. Or wearing a R100,000 watch and wearing a R100,000 watch. It's going to tell you the same time. They work hard for that thing and then when they get it, they enjoy it for five minutes. And then that feeling's gone. And we're looking for new sensations that cost money perhaps, like going to a cafe every day or a new car. And we think that anything below that is not worthy. And I think that the only worthy things are all below that. We've replaced beauty with what money can purchase. I think we really need to wash our eyes. Just look at the world and see how beautiful simple things are. I started to appreciate the simple things. I enjoy sitting around a table with good family and good friends and enjoying a good meal. It was when we just moved here and I had no money. And I had just enough to provide us for that meal, that lunch. My kids were laughing and I was laughing and my wife was laughing and we were sharing jokes. I realized that I had more than what was in front of me. That for me means a lot more than money. When you come to the end of your life and you have a bank full of money and you don't have any friends and you've misplaced the pot somewhere. Wealth is what you have in your heart and what you can share with other people. Every now and then you have to give up a piece of meat for someone who's in need or a bowl of confit. A sandwich doesn't cost me anything, a piece of cake doesn't cost me anything. It's the good that doesn't cost anything that brings back the most dividends in your life. Unrequested. Unexpected. You never expect it. It brings you love. It brings you recognition. It brings you friendship. I think at the end of the day the true essence of why we are here is to appreciate this world more in all its forms. I would rather create memories than make money because that is something that one day when I close my eyes I'll be able to look back at the memories. Every day is filled with opportunity to create these memories and you put it in your memory bank instead of your bank account and then, you know, if you need to access it you can go there and you can pull out the memory and it will put a smile on your face. I come from a place where we put the value of your heart first before you put the value of money. Thanks for watching this film. All the stories we've made over the last two years have only been possible because of the support that we've received from our patrons on Patreon. So if you'd like to help us keep these stories coming then check out our Green Renaissance page in the link below. Thanks a lot. Want a kiss?