Official Uniforms
In the self-serving and odd universe of quotations (because nothing can be true or valid until it has been placed in the mouth of a deceased thinker), I am struck by the independent clause of Thoreau, from Walden, "beware of all enterprises that require new clothes." Dangerous advice for the industries that have made success from the fashion of activity: I give you the Yoga pant. This quotation is only partly true because it is used only in part. The full sentence Thoreau wrote: "I say,beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes." Even the complete unit is incomplete, robbed of context, but more accurate to Thoreau's objective. The newness of garment is not Thoreau's objection; his point is not sartorial. He reacts against the substitution of subjective alteration for objective change.
Our uniform, that outward projection of self, should be subservient to an inner truth. No quality of dress can alter that which exists below. We must separate the rhetorical from reality. Hoisting a victory flag does not make a victor. Donning running shoes does not make a runner. We know victory by the reality of success and the runner by a bounding gait, regardless of flag or proper shoes. So too must we, the brave warriors holding back the sea of terror, shore our battlements not with false fronted set pieces of powerful appearance, but the real, heavy material that composes our innerscape of being. We must don a new and proper uniform from the inside out, pulling the sleeves through openings in our tender skin until we are clothed, in toto, in fearlessness.
