Roxanne,
The way we dress should reflect who we are, not what we think others
expect.
When my wife and I first met, she saw only saw me in a business suit. On
our first date I showed up with dockers and a polo shirt. She was caught
off guard. It had never occured to her that I owned casual clothes.
During the date she talked to me about it. And I'll never forget what
she said, "You look just as comfortable in casual clothes as you do in
business clothes." And that would be my point: I dressed to reflect who
I was -- which is what made me comfortable -- and I didn't worry about
what others thought. It never occured to me, as I dressed for my date
with her, that I should try to impress her with my taste in clothing. I
simply put on what I liked and left it at that. She was free to like it
or dislike it. I wasn't worried about it either way.
Have you ever met a person in a business suit who was pretentious? You
knew, within moments of meeting them, that the suit was out of
character? You can change your clothes a lot easier than you can change
yourself, and when your clothes and your character don't match it is
very obvious. And by the same token when your clothes and your character
match, the result is a beautiful, majestic human being!
Just the other day I was walking from the parking garage to my office,
and I saw a man -- tall, grey, well-trimmed hair, slim and fit --
walking briskly. He was in a dark suit, dark tie, and had a perfectly
folded hankerchief in his suit coat pocket. He wore polished wingtips,
and a monogrammed french cuff shirt. His beauty, as a human being, was
refreshing and startling. I could tell a lot about the man by the way he
looked and the way he walked. I loved that man for who he was -- there
and then -- and for the struggle that had been his in reaching such an
exalted state. He fit his clothes. He looked like a swan on water, not a
swan on dry land! And I'd imagine he would look just as beautiful in his
casual clothes too. . .
-- Benjamin Compton bcompton@emailsolutions.comLearning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>