Reflections After My Jeans Didn't Fit

Why is it that when we are young, the only thought that is constantly looming in the front of our minds is the need to have the newest of everything? Whether it be the newest line of clothes, the newest shoes, the newest phone upgrade, the most recent hair style (supposedly now colored or feather hair extensions), or even the newest lingo.

I can remember begging groveling on hands and knees for the must-have jeans that all of my friends were wearing in middle school. Heaven forbid I walk into school in last year's jeans! It's amazing how much profit stores like American Eagle and Hollister gained from our naive points of view. Remember when the middle school motto might as well have been "the bigger the logo the better the style."


Luckily, when we transition into college it seems that this mentality takes a turn for the better as we start to phase our fashions and wants into a more mature state of mind. Slowly buying staple pieces for our closets that will be timeless such as the Longchamp le Pliage purse that I've carried for 5 years or the Jack Rogers that I will wear until they utterly fall apart. It almost becomes "uncool" to have the latest trends because we wouldn't dare want it to seem like we were still high school teeny-boppers.

Then we rapidly grow up and are forced into adulthood. Please tell me when this happened!?! Suddenly that constant need for the newest things transforms into a desire for our old identities. We quickly resort to longing for our old bodies; when we weren't scowling in the mirror at the new rolls or bulges that have started to appear here or there. When we could run around all day without losing our breath or eat whatever was put in front of us without a care in the world.

We throw away the necessity for the newest trend or name brand clothes that every other person around us is wearing. Instead, we drift toward vintage items or timeless pieces that set us apart from our coworkers. With a lingering dream of those skinny jeans that we used to be able to squeeze into still in the back of our minds.

Oh and who could forget the decision to switch from Blackberry to the new iPhone that took me a good 3 months to make up my mind. Who knew that I could live without BBM? And when I bought a new car, I never thought I would be able to get used to the newest of features; sometimes even wishing that I was still driving my first car... broken turn signal, awful air conditioning and all.

With age we grow fonder of possessions and people. Change is not something that we need anymore. It is more of something that we try to avoid. We grow comfortable in our norm and do not want to the newest of things. Tradition and stability become our thresholds.

So much for fitting into those old jeans... I guess this situation calls for an emergency change for something new.