In a post earlier this month I tried to explain one of the principles of minimalism that had to do with being realistic about your current self, rather than who you wish you were. I don’t think my explanation was all that clear, but then I came across a Reddit post that perfectly encapsulated what I was trying to say:

I began decluttering and slowly realized the hardest things to let go of weren’t simply useful or sentimental, for they were the objects tied to small fantasies about who I imagined I might become. As the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan suggested, our attachment isn’t really to the object of desire itself, but to the fantasy that keeps desire in motion.

Once I admitted I wasn’t actually living in those imagined scenes, the objects stopped feeling meaningful. They were just things, now stripped of the narrative glow I’d projected onto them.

Letting them go felt less like decluttering and more like telling the truth.

Minimalism, in that sense, is the clearing away of fantasy; the physical stuff simply follows.

from noblegeist via Reddit

That says everything better than I could!