On Having Some Style For A While

Peo­ple imi­tate each other to feel accepted. It is con­ve­nient and does not take a lot of think­ing. Still, every so often, you have to ask your­self if you have betrayed who you are in order to feel secure. Trad­ing orig­i­nal­ity for secu­rity is com­mon — espe­cially as we get older. Being “spe­cial” can be quite exhaust­ing. Also, no mat­ter what style you cham­pion as unique, enough peo­ple will even­tu­ally imi­tate it until it is no longer novel. Churches become cults when their com­mon lan­guage and actions become “tight” — or so imi­ta­tive of each other or a leader that you feel like you are in a room full of clones, instead of a room full of peo­ple.
The joke about young peo­ple (junior high — late twen­ties) is that they are all orig­i­nal, but in the same ways. In their need to estab­lish an iden­tity, they invari­ably copy some­one or some group. The need to fit into some group bal­ances the need to be unique.
Jesus looked com­mon enough to be able to dis­ap­pear into a crowd, but his think­ing and actions were truly orig­i­nal. He iden­ti­fied with all of God and human­ity at the greater level, but allowed for local cus­toms and times in his style too. He pre­sented the great­est para­dox of all: the most orig­i­nal per­son in the world was also the one with the great­est affin­ity for all other styles. True to his call­ing, he was the “Son of Man(kind).”
He under­stood pros­ti­tutes, adul­ter­ers, thieves, politi­cians, poor and rich alike, and he had a nobil­ity above the great­est kings — yet was con­tent to be a car­pen­ter. Maybe he was telling us some­thing about style all along. Style appar­ently has more to do with the aware­ness of the whole scheme of things, but almost noth­ing to do with being merely self-expressive. There is no greater style than to tran­scend all styles but not react against them. Masks and veneers are eas­ily changed or painted over. The soul even­tu­ally drops them all anyway.