I have officially come across the most depressing quote ever:
"If you are not in fashion, you are nobody." Lord Chesterfield
This means that my identity is linked to (a) being fashionable and (b) what others think of me.
That is so sad, especially as you get older. Yes, ther are always some older people that stay on top of fashion and dress stylishly, but for most, there is not a lot that they like or can wear. I have reached that point in my life, where everything I see in the shops is either boring or there just is nothing I like. Often things also don't fit me any more.
So, the older we get, the more we bocome nobodies and fade away from a society seriously obsessed with "the new". We should celebrate age like real milestones, like we do for children as they grow up. Treat age as a rite of passage, instead of casting the elderly to the side. We are commanded by God to care for the elderly and if the Pharisees were reprimanded for they treatment of their parents (read MArk 7:8-13), then what about us?
My identity is NEVER liked to something as transient as people's opinion or fashion. It is linked to what God thinks of me and how much I have grabbed hold of that. It is linked to contentment with who I have become and who I want to be.
