"Look for the bare necessities, the simple bare necessities, forget about your worries and your strife..."
While it may seem strange to take advice from a movie geared toward an audience of second-graders, this saying holds true and is very applicable to everyday life. Too often, we are overly obsessed with material items and having the most prestigious and spectacular looking life. We suffer from severe FOMO and we create unnecessary anxiety for ourselves. As a society, we Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook our lives in order to make ourselves look like we have everything together. We are so obsessed with having the newest version of everything and over-cluttering ourselves. This mindset of wanting approval of our status and position in life causes so much stress and worry, when in life, we really should not need to worry about anything.
As a society, we have been conditioned to think and move rapidly and to always be on the lookout for opportunities to make more money, have new things and build a better life for ourselves...but what for? Life in itself is beautiful and offers so much without adding in the material possessions and the chaos that is happening all around. We fail to take a break from our overly busy lives to admire the beauty of what the world has to offer. There is so much adventure and fun to be had, but most of us are more concerned with having a new iPhone. If we could learn to rid ourselves of these "necessities" and live simply on the essentials, we would live a much happier existence.
It is safe to say that most of us are bound by the chains of material possessions and we all have something that holds us back from seeing and doing everything that we want to experience in our short time on earth. If you participate in spring cleaning, you most likely find that every year when you are finished, you have over five garbage bags filled with clothes, gadgets, and other junk. You understand exactly what is meant by the "bondage" of material things. These material things are temporary fillers of happiness, buying you a high for a couple of weeks. True happiness comes from understanding that materials are not worth anything, but experience and true joy are worth everything.
The clutter to remove from our lives does not even need to be material clutter, it could simply be the clutter of our social lives or the amount of baggage we carry around. A lot of people do not realize how detrimental it is to hold on to past relationships (romantic or friendly), continuing to hold a grudge, keeping hurt feeling, etc. If that is the clutter you have, get rid of it. Let it go. Live life and do amazing things for yourself. Your life does not need to be tied down to emotions and holds that you put on yourself. If you keep your emotional baggage to a minimum and learn to not be bogged down by things out of your control, or be too upset by people who have wronged you, you will learn to be more joyful and to have happiness in your heart.
As stated in "The Jungle Book," keep your life simple and stick to the bare necessities. Live life with only the essentials. Get rid of negative people in your life and learn to lean on God, good friends and family. Learn to pay close attention to the beauty in everyday life. Take a minute to put down the phone while trying to get the perfect Instagram and appreciate your surroundings. Weed out any unnecessary clutter and any material items that you do not need. Living with less will result in your life having more.
