It’s amazing how few clothes we really need. As long as we change our underwear and shower, a set of clothes can easily last a week or more.
Through our youngest daughter, we have met travelers who think nothing of wearing one pair of shoes and the same clothes for months at a time. Sure, they visit the laundromat, but in general they don’t think of “changing clothes” to fit a new situation. (Or, they’ve decided to not give a shit.)
It’s likely a myth, but someone told me that Albert Einstein had multiple sets of the same outfit because he didn’t want to waste valuable brain power on “what should I wear, today?” True or not, not caring about variety in our appearance is wonderfully freeing to some and probably crazy making for others.
I go back and forth. Some days, I am blissfully unattached to my personal appearance or how my body looks in them. But if I’m honest, it’s much more likely that I’m tracking how I appear. I was raised to care A LOT about how I looked.
These days, I’m swimming daily. As a result, I’m not expending effort to hide what I view as imperfections about my body. Some of that unattachment to beauty comes from how I perceive this campground as being full of wonderfully imperfect bodies. It ain’t “body beautiful” here.
I am also working out every day, so there’s an inner peace that comes from the belief that I’m doing better in terms of self-care.
My goal is to find a balance – caring about my health, appearance and self-worth AND not caring too much about perfection or what others might think. I don’t know about you, but I find it to be a difficult thing to achieve.
