Stepping Out Of The Cave, Or, Don’t Think, Just Dress

I have two hoodies that I wear all the time. They are light-weight, slim fit, zip-up hoodies. They are exactly the same except one is blue and one is gray. They go over a tee shirt. If they are both in the laundry I have a little bit of a crisis in the morning. I have a few other semi-warm pieces of middle-layer clothing, but deciding which one to wear stresses me out.

I want to get a couple more of these hoodies so that I’m not so burdened with indecision in the mornings. Unfortunately I can’t find them anymore. Slim-fit styles are no longer in fashion. This is challenging for me because slim is the only fit that I fit into. Everything else is like a bag of carrots with only one carrot left in it. Alas, the world has changed.

In the story of Epimenides of Crete, Epimenides, who is a shepherd, wanders into a cave and in a precursor to Rip Van Winkle, falls asleep for 50 years. When he wakes up, the world has changed.

We all agreed that 2020 was not worth counting in the grand scheme of things. We needed a do-over. 2021 didn’t serve us well in that regard. It was more of a 2020 The Sequel than a 2020 reboot. Consequently, in some ways, I feel like I’ve spent the last 2 years in that cave. The world appeared to me a certain way in 2019, and now, on the cusp of 2022, it seems like a different place.

2021 was hard. I felt like I was on shaky ground, confused by competing voices that all claimed my allegiance as the sole arbiters of truth. I lost friends. Painfully. There were plenty of good things, but as I look back on them they feel like life-giving gulps of air sucked in while struggling to stay afloat in a raging river. I’m grateful for their generous presence, but I’m not sure they did much to get me out of the torrent.

In many ways 2020 and 2021 were years of excess. Too much Netflix, too much social media, too much toilet paper. Too much anxiety, too much hatred, too much death. Maybe it’s because the week in between Christmas and New Years feels pregnant with new possibility, but I think 2022 needs to be a year of throwing off the excesses, simplifying and getting back to work.

I’ve been working on simplifying my life in a lot of areas for a couple of years. I want a few more identical hoodies so that I can streamline my wardrobe further. What should I wear today? A tee shirt and a hoodie. Think of all the brainpower I can save with that life hack.

2022 is a different world than the one we left in 2019. I suspect it’s more about our perception of it than the reality, but no matter: it seems different. We all pivoted in March of 2020 into a posture of just figuring out the new reality that was forced on us. I’m not sure if that reality is going to change in 2022, but I think I have to. Even if we go to war with Russia, or COVID-22 mutates six more times, or Kanye and Marilyn Manson headline at the Dove Awards, I need to make sure I am walking on the “ancient paths.” There is a version of me, the most real human version, mature in Christ, that I need to get closer to this year. I doubt this is the year that I actually meet that person, but if Jesus has anything to say about it, the fuzzy figure off in the distance will get a little clearer in my field of vision.

I hope he’s wearing a slim-fit hoodie.