Mary-Kate and I walked into a new cafe in downtown Guelph the other week. I noticed two men sitting down for lunch, each in nicely pressed business suits, removing their trench coats, chatting away, as if they had the world in their hands, had it all together. Successful. Our suits say, "we've made it." "We're here." "This is it." And I wondered, as I start my own business, whether I needed to buy one of those fancy pressed suits so I can walk around being successful. Looking like I've made it. There. And talk to other pressed suits to share our success. Is that me? Who am I if not teacher. Who am I as entrepreneur. Creative. Father. An idea factory. Generating me. I am my own factory manufacturing myself. Each day. Every day. I create who I am. Who I can be. Photographer. Writer. Storyteller. Each day is a new slate. A blank canvass. Spiderman who connects. Superman who flies the impossible. I am superhero.
When I mentioned my suit envy to Mary-Kate, she said, "Yeah, I saw those suits, and thought, thank god I don't have to wear those every day."
One does feel important when wearing a suit otherwise why would you wear one of those everyday. Having worn a suit before I quickly realised that it resembles a uniform, as in a uniform you may wear in school -everyone around you looks the same, acts the same, talks the same, aspires for the much of the same. Kind of faceless in a way. Now having said that wearing a nice suit from time to time for a fun event is quite thrilling and sometimes down right dashing, but 5 days a week for many weeks a year, well not that thrilling. Wonder what they really think - look at this lucky guy, no suit, no time constraints, eating lunch and making his own life..hmmmm
ReplyDeleteYes, I grew up wearing the suit costume all through school. Easy to decide what to wear each day. I must admit that I like getting dressed up in a suit now as much as I like hotels. Love them. There I go. I'm out of the suit and hotel closet.
ReplyDeleteMy moto for what I'm wearing is "if i can't get under the car and change the oil in it, I don't want to wear it". I've got a lot of clothes with oil stains.
ReplyDeleteI like your posts Mike - keep writing!
Loving the writing Mike.
ReplyDeleteSorry to quote at length, but I thought of Thoreau as soon as I read of your ego being shaken by suited inequality:-
A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in; for him the old will do, that has lain dusty in the garret for an indeterminate period. Old shoes will serve a hero longer than they have served his valet -- if a hero ever has a valet -- bare feet are older than shoes, and he can make them do. Only they who go to soires and legislative balls must have new coats, coats to change as often as the man changes in them. But if my jacket and trousers, my hat and shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will do; will they not? Who ever saw his old clothes -- his old coat, actually worn out, resolved into its primitive elements, so that it was not a deed of charity to bestow it on some poor boy, by him perchance to be bestowed on some poorer still, or shall we say richer, who could do with less? I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. The loon retires to solitary ponds to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its slough, and the caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry and expansion; for clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal coil. Otherwise we shall be found sailing under false colors, and be inevitably cashiered at last by our own opinion, as well as that of mankind.
http://www.literaturepage.com/read/walden-17.html
You are a superhero.
ReplyDeleteFor sure.
Suit = conformity.
JJ