Movies are filled with wisdom if you look for it.
I tend to watch anything with lots of explosions, swearing, car chases, and aliens. I don’t limit it to this, of course. There’s plenty of room for elves, vampires, apocalypses, and zombies!
In these movies I find messages of kindness, loyalty, and honesty. Seriously. I find more messages about things like this than I do in any Oscar winner.
The good guys win because they stick together, they face the truth, and their choices are ultimately based on caring for themselves and others. The bad guys lose because they operate out of hate and vengeance.
I’ll save that for another blog, though.
Today we’re talking about Fight Club. Under the layers of gore, mental illness, and general mayhem, are messages about how we choose to live our lives, and taking ourselves off auto-pilot.
The quotes I’ve used are all by Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt), from the movie, like:
“You are not your job, you’re not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet.”
NOTE: I wrote the best essay of my life about Fight Club in grad school, and wish I still had a copy of it. (Spoiler alert) The movie is about a very mentally ill man with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), also known as split personality disorder. That was what my essay was about. I got an A. It was really freaking good.
AUTO-PILOT
Woven into the story of Fight Club is the message that too many of us are going through our everyday doing what we think we’re supposed to do, buying what we think we’re supposed to buy, saying what we think we’re supposed to say, because that’s just what you do.
But it doesn’t bring happiness.
“We buy things we don’t need, to impress people we don’t like.”
Ouch. We want happiness and we’re trying so hard to get there. We think if we follow the status quo we’ll get there, but it takes us further and further away.
“Reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.”
The theme throughout the film is that the only way you can truly set yourself free is to let go of everything and start over.
That may be a bit extreme.
However, decluttering all of the stuff in your life that is extraneous and building intentionally from there doesn’t have to be extreme. Take it down to the minimum you, the individual, need and want in life.
Take yourself off of auto-pilot and determine your life intentionally.
Have the kind of home you really want. Not the one you thought you were supposed to want.
Have the job you want. Not the one you went to school for because you didn’t know what else to do.
Have the relationships that fit. Not the ones you fell into because they were available.
Live an intentional life.
WHY DO WE DO THE THINGS WE DO?
So, what’s the deal? Why are so many of us on auto-pilot? We’ve been given the idea that there is one right way to live life, one goal that we’re all supposed to be aiming at.
“We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact.”
There isn’t one mold that fits everyone.
There isn’t one fashion trend that will suit all bodies, and styles.
There isn’t one career path that will make everyone happy.
There isn’t one path to contentment. There is no perfect.
When you strip away the “shoulds”, “supposed to’s”, and “have to’s” hammered into your mind by popular media, you have a chance to find what really fits your soul.
LETTING GO
In Fight Club, the person known only as “The Narrator”, played by Edward Norton is lonely and exhausted. He’s living an auto-pilot life working in a job he hates. Enter Tyler Durden, who explains why they came together with this:
“I'm free in all the ways that you are not.”
Tyler represents all of the freedom that comes with being who you want to be and not worrying about what other people think.
Yes, in the movie this all goes way off the rails as everything is taken to an extreme, but we sometimes need the extreme to point out what we can’t see otherwise.
“Stop trying to control everything and just let it go.”
A cluttered home is one in which nothing has been let go. Not the material possessions, not expectations or assumptions, not fears or shame.
A minimalist life is one in which you let go of these things. It doesn’t mean you don’t own anything. It means that what you own has meaning, reason, and a purpose that leads you toward your goals.
In one anxiety-producing scene in the movie, Tyler tells The Narrator to literally take his hands off the wheel while driving. This, of course, leads to flying off the side of the road, but that’s not what’s important here.
If you take the metaphor, instead of the literal (please keep your hands on the actual car wheel), it’s at this point in the movie that The Narrator wakes up and sees what is really happening around him. He has let go of everything that does not serve him (almost, he’ll let go of Tyler, in a moment) and realizes this extreme is not what he wants.
He wants the freedom, but he doesn’t want to have to hurt himself or anyone else to get it.
THE END
Movies have nice tidy endings and in this one The Narrator has one final boss battle with Tyler and finally figures out that he has to let go of the safety net Tyler has given him so he can finally be free.
In the end we see The Narrator standing with the one person he has allowed himself to love as he’s gone through this transformation, Marla Singer (played by Helena Bonham-Carter), watching the world be remade through destruction.
“You met me at a very strange time in my life.” – The Narrator
We all go through strange times and they may take a certain amount of discomfort in order for you to get to the good stuff.
THE TAKEAWAY
Other than the fact that Fight Club is a super awesome movie riddled with meaning and you should totally watch it ASAP, I want you to walk away from reading this knowing that a minimalist life is an authentic life.
A minimalist home is one that is just right for you. It is one that is filled with those things I see in all of the action-adventure/sci-fi/fantasy movies I love so much: kindness, loyalty, and honesty.
I’ll leave you with just a couple more Tyler Durden quotes:
“The things you own end up owning you.”
In your minimalist life you will own the things, and they will support your path.
And finally:
“I say never be complete. I say stop being perfect. I say, let us evolve. Let the chips fall where they may be.”
Ditch Your Sh*t: Decluttering Your Mindset to Declutter Your Home available for pre-sale now and everywhere books are sold October 7, 2025.