Your life is not going to start when you have better clothes
Life/fashion advice from RHOBH
I was watching Real Housewives of Beverly Hills last night (S15E11), and it unexpectedly delivered advice that has nothing, but also everything, to do with clothes.
Erica is talking to her therapist. People keep telling her “things are about to get better”. Erika is tired and wants to know “but when?”
The therapist responds something along the lines of : “We expect there to be a time when all the bills are payed, the laundry is folded in the drawers, we’ve gotten to the other side. A place where everything is ready, and everything is done, and you can finally start enjoying your life. That moment is never going to happen. There will not be such a point. Life is now. This is what life is.”
This got me thinking about clothes. Clothes are one of the better and more effective ways of distracting from the realities of life. “The perfect wardrobe” seems like the solution for all the problems of life. Finding the perfect item seems solvable compared to solving life. It is so easy look for better clothes. They are everywhere. It is so easy and so reassuring to plan for future that these clothes will deliver, once you find them. Attempting to solve the wardrobe before life can start, postpones the start of life indefinitely.
It also puts on the clothes a task they can’t possibly complete. The task of saving from the present day and delivering a desired, but not defined future. Once we have these better clothes, then our life is going to change. These clothes will save us, if only we found the right ones. And then we finally have the clothes, they seem strange, it’s difficult to wear them, and the life most certainly didn’t change.
We are persistent in believing that there is better clothes out there. That thought carries hope. Hope that it is indeed possible to get better clothes, and thus change your life.
This comes with the accompanying thought, that once you have a wardrobe of “better clothes”, you will of course stop wanting new clothes. I have never heard that someone stopped buying clothes because they had bought themselves into a situation of “perfect wardrobe”, where they don’t need any new clothes. This, like the moment of everything being ready, will not arrive. If someone reaches a place of “I have enough. I don’t need more,” it wasn’t because they got really good at buying. It was something else entirely.
There is no better clothes, just different clothes. There is no future wardrobe that will unlock your life. There is only now. The clothes you already own. The life you already have. And the uncomfortable, yet strangely freeing thought, nothing is on hold. Here is your permission slip to start living the life you are hoping the clothes will deliver.