108. ...endurance through reduced friction.

(morning thinking)

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

I have liked, in the past, a skinny jean. The all over below the waist hug they afford feels comforting. The pressure defines my leg edges; the places where I stop and the space I’m in starts. A skinny jean makes boundaries clear.  I read once, that flares were popular with hippies because they blurred the edges between people and the ground they stood on. Made an individual more earth. Probably, I suspect anyway, most people making fashion choices aren’t thinking that much.

Do looser clothes wear out more slow? The trou’ I go now are looser. Move more easily.

My skinny jeans wore out quite quickly. I was definitely buying trousers at the affordable, rather than longevity, end of the retail clothing scale, but I think the friction played a big part. 

I went through a focused spell of identifying and reducing the friction in my life. Aiming to move more smooth. I mean gentle and consistent rather than that thin-moustache-car-salesmen-spiv smooth. 

My trouser selection moves more easily and I hope they’ll last longer. In part I’m curious whether I’ll achieve sartorial endurance through reduced friction.

When we remove all the friction we lose opportunities for growth. We get better through adverse experience. We learn from the difficult.

Friction processes the food we eat, between teeth, from fork lifted chunks to manageable digestible morsel size. Friction makes heat. Friction can be pleasurable.

Friction, ever finer grit, can make smooth.  

Periods of change introduce friction. I’m in one of those again. The frequency of change is, itself, changeable. Sometimes normal lasts a long time, stretches out behind and ahead beyond our comfort horizons and it’s hard to remember a time when things weren’t thus. Our life’s sea is flat calm. Then there’s stormy times, towering peaks and troughs with instances of unpredictable highs and lows. As those pass there are snatches of clear skies and stillness offering respite from the tummy lurching ups and downs. We can’t always know while we’re in those times of plain sailing how long they’ll last.

What’s all that got to do with trousers?

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I feel a little lost right now. No bad thing. I’m letting new normals settle in. The horizon looks stormy and I can’t tell whether they’ll come this way or pass near by.