Living a Luminous Life
I finally brought shampoo for the first time this year..
Yesterday I brought shampoo for the first time this year. Not because I’ve been on a personal hygiene strike, although I wouldn’t blame you for thinking I am as my fringe is furiously stuck to my forehead, but because I made a promise to myself. Promises sworn to one’s self tend to be the least likely kept. The boy you let finger you in the sea in Pathos? I promised to take that to the grave and it will lay in the damp earth alongside my once voluptuous body and the promises I never kept to myself. Something about this particular promise seemed important though, in the same way ripe, juicy peaches are important to girls on Substack during the summer months.
At the beginning of the year we moved back to my little house in Dorset with a wild idea to turn it into a home and £18,000 of debt (mine). A feeling I can only liken to someone’s size eleven foot slowly pushing into your sternum for two years and never finishing the job off. A young divorce and a need to buy anything that promised to change me into something or someone else, which is every product on the shelves, I found myself in a breath snatching hole I couldn’t climb out of.
This time I had had just enough. Enough of ending the month with four pounds and a new Klarna subscription. Enough of paying the credit card’s minimum payment and then just needing this new acne busting cleanser. Enough of promising that my situation would change and instead watching my old habits side-eye me from the future.
But most of all, enough of not having enough. An uncomfortable knowing stirred inside me that if I didn’t have enough now, I never would. Great philosophers and wise sages have been politely pointing to this fact since before the Budda left the grounds of his extravagant palace and Venus was birthed out of the salty, foamy Cypriot waters but we built ten story shopping malls and raced to collect Stanley cups anyway. Go fuck yourself Aristotle, I need this plastic tray to go inside my plastic vegetable drawer in case my tomatoes decide to fornicate with my baby leaf. If I really think deeply on the matter, isn’t it strange a ten-story high building exists, bursting at the seams with items you might like to buy with the money you work all day for, on a planet that’s suspended within an infinite inky black but glorious nothingness?
Parcels would arrive and I wouldn’t care to open them, the excitement of acquisition ending at the checkout. The more of something I owned, the more of it I seemed to buy and the greyer my life looked. Staring at three full and two half empty shampoo bottles with travel size options that will never see the world outside of my bathroom made my stomach churn. I decided then and there I would always use what I had. This sounded like a revelation, but perhaps it’s more responsible. This would mean living like tapping twice to replace something I was bored of wasn’t a possibility and to keep my mind sharp against any shampoo adverts of woman having orgasms under rainforest showers. The most tropical thing in my bathroom is mould. Can we believe that advert existed? Of course we can - horny girls use herbal essences, didn’t you know?
This made me feel uncomfortable. Not just the memory of the advert, but having to use all of what I owned and ignoring the pulsation inside me that yearned for the promise the next product would bring. In this day and age, is decent hair volume too much to ask? It turns out the second most broken promise is that of volumising shampoo bottles to their customers.
Why did I have all this shampoo? I’ll call a therapist and get back to you, but perhaps it was because I thought I deserved it. Maybe I didn’t care for what I already had or didn’t see it’s value. Perhaps having the best hair I possibly could was really, really important. Maybe it’s everyone trying to sell things to me all the bloody time but I’ve been working through it (the shampoo, not the shampoo trauma) and it took me eight months to get to the end. It’s very likely the 750ml conditioner will outlive me.
We read so much about decluttering for a simplified, calmer life. About our planet throwing a fit about our unsatiable thirst for everything. About sorting through things so we have only the things that bring us joy and don’t get me wrong, I love a declutter. Watching Marie Kondo fold a t-shirt does something to me. But it wasn’t until listening to Sarah Wilson that I heard someone tell me to stop. Take the I’m a minimalist now beige vase’ out of the basket. Use what you have. All of it. Only then decide if it needs replacing. The best way to minimise your stuff is to use what you have and stop buying ‘things’.
There was no warm feeling or joy as I stared at the abundance of shampoo. It didn’t feel abundant at all. We have a base level of things we need to own and facilitate feeling safe and secure, but when we exceed this it can feel like walking into an entirely grey and chrome living room. There’s a silver French bulldog statue and very white lighting. Somethings off, it’s making you miserable but you can’t put your finger on it. It’s eating a big bowl of pasta but someone didn’t salt the water. It’s wondering who on this earth brought all this shampoo?
When our basic human needs are met, and thriving is an option, we still feel as though we’ve not acquired enough. Maybe all our stuff takes up volumes of brain space that it squeezes out our ‘enough’ signal, causing us to fight over flat screen TVs and hoard six cloud paints in case one day it gets discontinued. It no longer feels delicious for me to come home with three shopping bags of clothes unless I’m eleven again and performing a fashion show for my family as they attempt to look a little less mortified and a little more interested.
When I thought about my life with only one shampoo at a time, it felt somewhat luminous. Spacious and sunny but maybe silly to some, but not to me.
When I imagine a luminous life, my knee-jerk superficial reaction was to have skin like Hayley Bieber but I am sure something runs deeper within me than that.
If I close my eyes and imagine a luminous existence I see my own skin, freckles tracing constellations and light existing behind my creased eyes. Breathing as though I knew my place in the world amongst sun and sky. Clothing I chose because it made me happy now dress a body I know as well as my grandmother’s flapjack recipe. Honouring my ancestors by wearing the facial features they worked so hard to gift me. Life is surrounded by a little and a lot in tandem. A gold bangle a woman gifted me in India. A candle my nephew poured with his chubby hands. A smile given to me by a sister. Cooking in my favourite pan. A comfy bed that doesn’t give me a bad back. Hearing words like ‘mum and baby doing well’. A dog who let’s you sob into his warm fur without protest. A knowing that you could wake up and experience another best day of your life. More time bathing, less time buying. Sun peering though linen curtains and I tend to my garden. It’s a life of just enough. Not too much, not too little. Just enough. A middle ground and imperfect equilibrium.
A truly luminous life I believe to be a harmonious one. With neighbours, the environment and people who can’t park to save their lives (me, please be nice). It’s a balance in the age of indulgence which for so many doesn’t feel like indulgence at all. It feels harder than ever.
Having just enough isn’t to be mistaken for a less beautiful life. It’s not void of beauty but has space for it to be seen. This is something I have always feared. That if I’m not consuming as much I’ll fall behind. Slowly becoming more unattractive by the day, my home looking dishevelled compared to others, never owning that sodding white sofa, unaware of the ultimate holiday destination and always resigned to have more shit eyelashes than everyone else.
But then I think about luminous people.
Their essence still stands in the absence of all else, not because of it.