It's True

    It's true that we spend, a lot of us, (sometimes me included), considerable time thinking about the presentation we give to strangers on the street.  What comes to me just now is, why?  Why do we consider the feelings and thoughts, positions and mores, of others before ourselves when it comes to our apparel?  Is it that we fear rejection? Yes.  Is it that we wish to blend into the greater society on some level? Yes. Is it that we want to attract interesting people, and potential mates? Yes.
     It comes down to community.  We, all of us exist within a construct of socialization we call community.   

     It is not enough that we play on the internet, text each other, and hook up willy-nilly. That isn't enough.  We are a community. We are a group of folk, who live in the same area, and largely have the same goals for our lives. Giving it a global view; that is what we all want, every day. We all want food, housing, health, love, learning, support in our endeavors, and continuance.  And we manifest these desires in our attire each day, to a greater or lesser degree.

    Funny thing; those goals are the same, regardless of money, class, or ethnic center.  It has nothing whatever to do with sex. It knows nothing about politics, or religion or education.  In the final view it knows nothing about locality, or nation.  We are.  Our goals, beyond the boundaries of narrowly held ideologies are identical. The plowman in the field wants the same for his children as the great do, happiness.

    We spend time trying mightily to separate ourselves from others.  The real truth, the thing we cannot manage to grok is this: we are of the same family.  All of us.  Wherever we are. Baseline, we are human people from the same genetics, striving to live our lives, and get to the next day, the next decade.  We want our children, if we have them, to move forward, where we can not.

    What is bad about that?  What is intrinsically awful about wanting one's own progeny to foster and thrive in the world?  Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
    The thing that is awful, that makes us vile, that makes us less than worthy as humans, less than worthy of divine love, however we may envision that, is denying to others the simple right of dignified treatment.

    When it comes to it, we have only each other to rely on.  Sure, there are upwards of 8 billion of us now. That does not diminish the responsibility we have to every human soul.
    Do not choose to leave each other aside,  We cannot afford that luxury. We need each other, desperately.  The world is changing rapidly, and if we, and our next generation, are to live through it, we must bring our full selves, our greatest being, our least divisive selves, to it.
     Bringing negative judgement to the appearance of others is one of the ways we create walls between us.  We must work hard, and consciously, to tear them down if we are to move forward in the 21st century.  Whether we like it or not, (and there are plenty who don't like it a bit) the world we live in is daily becoming a truly global village.  In a village, people rely on each other.  This is no less true when the village has billions in its population.  So deriding each other for our choices of apparel, not only diminishes us personally, but it makes those we judged harshly far less likely to help, should we need it.  Its in everyone's interest to stop the relentless judgements that proliferate across the web, that serve only to bolster the insecurities of those who judge. 
    Besides, it is in our very differences that we are sublime, not in our similarities.  Different is not bad, it is wondrous.
Give your full heart to the world, it needs it.