On the Path to a Simple Life

I was chatting with a professor, and then it suddenly hit me: I don’t want this life.

Moving to New York City and then back home opened my eyes to gratitude and the beauty of my hometown.

I wanted to run away from home, and that was obvious when I applied to colleges. The closest school I applied to was UMBC in Baltimore County, and the rest of the schools were out of state in Pennsylvania and New York. I knew where my heart was set though: New York City. The Fashion Institute of Technology was my dream school and when I got my early acceptance letter because of the honors program, I committed immediately. I romanticized the shit out of the life I’d live in New York City, thinking it would be the best years of my life.

It couldn’t be farther than that. While I did live some of my dreams, and expectations were met in some ways, I became horribly depressed. I was friends with people that were terrible for me, I entered a relationship that destroyed my mental health and confidence, and I was always stressed about money. I went into debt to go to FIT, about $20,000, and the only reason I didn’t take private loans was because my mother sold her stocks for me. I am so, so indebted to her for that.

New York showed me hyper-consumerism.

I studied fashion, so I was thrust into this immediately. Everyone was always buying new clothes, heading out to the newest restaurant, going to concerts, and so on. It took me awhile to distance myself from this when I was at home, but I realized that living in a city is extremely difficult if you’re against consumption. For many people, the entire point of living in a major city is to have access to all of this, living the dream life where you party every night. That wasn’t my dream.

When I moved back home, I saw how many clothes I owned crammed into the tiny bedroom I grew up in. I saw how many books I owned. How much stuff I owned, how I never used a good chunk of it. And that disgusted me. I started cleaning out under my bed, scraping the corners of the house for things that were mine and that I didn’t want.

I was talking to one of my professors about my PhD plans and applications, and when she asked if I was going to apply to any in New York, for the first time I verbally articulated how much anxiety going to New York would cause me. It was like knots in my stomach, because the thought of living in NYC on a meager $25,000 graduate student stipend sounded like a nightmare, especially for someone like me that has to live alone.

I missed my family & learned the importance of relationships. Breaking my lease was a blessing in disguise.

When l was in New York, I missed my parents and family all the time. I called my mother every single week, texted her almost every day, and she would know immediately if something was wrong with me by the way I sounded. She knew when I was in that terrible relationship, because she said I sounded so sad whenever I mentioned this guy. And I was sad, she was dead right, but I was also deep in denial.

Moving back home during pandemic, my father almost died of COVID, and that was a game changer for me. I had this lease I was stuck on in Brooklyn, was paying almost $1,000 USD a month for it, and I basically was living at home and didn’t know how to find a subletter. I did eventually end up breaking my lease because my roommate wanted to screw me over, with no fee attached, but that’s a completely different story.

I chose to graduate a year early after the roommate fiasco and moved back home. I immediately saved $10,000 in education, decided to take a gap year before my PhD program, and then just chill during this year. I wasn’t going to stress about what or where I was going to go or do. I wanted to write and that was all.

I started gardening. I cook for my family every single day. I do my mother’s chores. When my mother got skin cancer on her nose, I helped dress her stitches. I realized that I didn’t care about living this NYC dream life when I was helping my aging parents out, because I was happier at home. I’m someone with poor mental health, and being close to my mother helps me out. She’s my rock. In New York, I kept losing it because she wasn’t there, and she knew it.

The Simple Joys

Cooking really helped me realize the joy that’s within simple living. I cook almost everything from scratch now, even the pasta sauce we use for our spaghetti. I could’ve never done this if I wasn’t on a gap year, but I’m enjoying it while I can. I garden my own herbs and spices to put in my food, and I’m also growing my own potatoes, onions, peppers, and celery.

I’m really, really happy nowadays just grabbing a book and reading in the backyard. I find my creative energy humming because I simply don’t care what people think about me anymore. I am just me, existing in peace in the universe. I know I am a kind person. In the first grade, I gave all my allowance away to my friends so they could buy all the snacks they wanted, leaving me nothing. That is my first memory of how I bend over backwards to make the world a better place.

I recently watched the episode of Chef’s Table with the Buddhist monk Jeon Kwang, who I want to emulate spiritually. She discusses how she has her ancestors in every recipe, and how at peace she is with life. It was so beautiful, I highly recommend it. But that completely set me on this path again, one where I am able to focus on simple living.

Money Doesn’t Matter

This is going to be my final point, but when my father was dying, I really began to realize how stupid all this hustle culture was in American society. My father sacrificed his life, never having any breaks, to keep making more and more money. And so I became quite disillusioned with the American Dream during this time, vowing to never sacrifice my integrity or valuable life for an income.

Deep down, I always hated money, because I grew up in this Iranian-American hustle culture where the men work their lives away so their family can have a BMW or something really stupid. Then, in my toxic relationship, I dated a guy who was obsessed with getting rich. He absolutely got on my nerves because of this, because he was doing the same exact thing I hated. I knew he was going to hate his life in the near future and I wanted out, and, thankfully, it ended (he dumped me for another girl, one more “ambitious.”).

My mother always said you can’t take your money to the grave. I don’t want to make a shit ton of money so I can buy sweatshirts that relied on Muslim slave labor or the exploitation of women. I will grow my own food, thrift my necessities, and call it a day if needed. As Jeong Kwan said, once you are free you feel the potential of the universe humming through you. And I definitely am feeling that.

All I want is my garden, family, and a library need me. That’s all I need.