The ultimate luxury is having the time and money to spend with and on the people you love.

For those who are healthy, the worst thing about this pandemic is missing the joy of being around the people we love, which is the best part of life. Being forced to go without shows us the most important things in life.

But one thing I have learned this year, after simplifying my life with minimalist practices for over a decade, is how much more joy I get from being able to give joy to others, such as in seeing them enjoy my gifts for them or in being able to share time with them, than I get from buying things for myself when my needs have already been met.

When I talk about my needs, I have to clarify. As the expanding home sizes and the glut of storage spaces in this country show, most Americans probably have everything they “need” but nothing close to what they “want” – whether what they want is to have a minimalist life or to “keep up with the Joneses” at the other extreme.

So when American minimalists talk about “needs” vs. “wants”, what they are really talking about is how to move from the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to the top (our “wants”) and to discard what we don’t even want. The physiological needs coming from scarcity have been replaced by the physiological needs of coming from abundance – feeling hemmed in and oppressed by the mountains of our belongings, rather than feeling deprived.

After almost losing my identification over a decade ago, I realized that I needed to get myself organized and my possessions under control. I had no idea of what I actually needed because I had never bothered to think much about it. Long story short, I am still a work in progress, but after having separated myself from so many accumulated things, not only do I properly value the things that I have but I also value the acquisition of more things much much less. And it is so freeing to have the financial as well as mental and emotional space to think about what I can give to other people instead.

So this year, I hope that we can properly give thanks for what we do have, what is most important in life, and consider how we can use this time to better prepare ourselves so that we are able to give to others.