In my early teens, I had to wear a bootcut to be cool. In my late teens, skinny jeans were all the rage.
I’m fascinated by how fashion changes. I see the change in fashion as a metaphor for life.
Recently I watched the movie Sweet Revenge: A Hannah Swensen Mystery. In it, they said something interesting about fashion, which I, of course, wholeheartedly agree with.
Fashion is cyclical. Wait long enough and everything comes back in style.
What life lesson can we draw from this saying?
When you’re a kid, your parents value your health more than you do. They constantly tell you to eat vegetables and never indulge in junk food.
When you become a teenager, you value being cool more than anything else. You drink as much beer as you can, go to bed late, and eat pizza or burgers five times a week. You do all this without thinking about your health.
In your middle age, you start valuing your health. This time, your parents won’t be the ones to worry about your health.
In life, just as in fashion, things are cyclical. What you value changes with time. The advice from your parents that you didn’t want to listen to when you were young becomes fashionable when you’re an adult. As David Foster Wallace beautifully puts it:
The older you get, the smarter your parents become.