The Trend

It is a stream that flows through us all. It tells us how things are to be today, what we are to wear and even what to say and think. The Trend is a mighty but blurry force, difficult to trace and hard to disobey.

Sometimes we recognize it and understand what it does to us; then it is quite harmless. We may follow the general clothing fashion of today simply to avoid drawing too much attention to ourselves. We don’t believe in it, but just do it out of convenience.

But often we are actually convinced that we are doing what is right for us and acting on personal choice. This year’s fashion is beautiful, we think and we hardly remember what we liked last year. That is scary. And it is not even a propaganda trick of some totalitarian government exercising thought control; we do it to ourselves. That is even scarier.

The Trend comes from nowhere. No one consciously initiates it and its direction is unpredictable. It seems to be like a force of nature, like the weather or an earthquake, and it is perceived to be as inevitable and unquestionable. It just has to be that way, we think. It is right. It is natural.

We laugh at pictures from the past. How could they wear something like that? How could they think such a thing? We now know the answer. We now know what is right. We know it until we know something else.