Intro

Jordan Peterson remarks that articulate communication is a powerful tool if only for expressing your own thoughts, convictions and emotions.  What articulate communication is to the mind, so is elegance to the body. Elegance is the virtue (i.e. cultivated good habit) of dressing well; it is a way of saying who you are and what you stand for, without having to speak.

Not-so Short Exercise 21

  1. Do you have clothes or shoes in your wardrobe that you haven’t worn in 3 months?  Pack them together in a carton or paper bag.  (Idea being to give them up after the lockdown is over.  Yes, I’ll remind you J )
  2. Do you have clothes or shoes that are worn out or faded?  Pack them in the same carton or paper bag.
  3. Do you have clothes or shoes that no longer fit you?  Same carton.
  4. Do you have good but torn clothes or shoes that need mending?  Put them in a separate carton or paper bag.
  5. Now have a look at what is left in your wardrobe:

a.  Do you honestly have sufficient clothes?  (Note, what is sufficient for a university student is not the same as what is sufficient for a working professional.)

b.  Do you have appropriate clothes for the different occasions you engage in?  That is, do you have clothes for sports/gym/working out, clothes for school/work, clothes for formal/special events, clothes for hikes/manual work, etc.?

6.  Consult with a colleague of yours (or your mentor) in case you’re unsure if you have too many clothes, or too few.

7.  If you need to get more or newer clothes, try find out a good place to buy from and more or less how much the entire exercise will cost you (again once lockdown is over).

Commentary
There is speaking and there is articulate communication. There is wearing clothes and there is elegance.  Both the “speaking” and the “wearing clothes” could be symptoms or results of a lack of culture.  It is possible the guy just doesn’t know better.  But if we are to be honest with ourselves, for the majority of us, they are more often than not a result of our laziness.  Laziness in budgeting for a good wardrobe and laziness in actually dressing well.  It is always easier to spend the whole day in the clothes you slept with, isn’t it? Especially now in these lockdown days. Neither lack of culture nor laziness is manly.  More later.

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