That All-Important First Look...

To my dear children,

You couldn't help but see JCPenney’s back-to-school commercials on TV this summer, the ads that featured the cute kids who tell you that “the only thing anyone really cares about” when it comes to school is that “first day” and the outfit you choose to wear.  “I’ve been told this stuff can make or break your entire year,” you heard one mom say in another of the ads while you watched a visual of her son alone at the lunch table because he’s not wearing the right kind of clothes.  According to the commercials you saw the most important task of the first day of school is to “cement your legacy of awesomeness with your first day look.”  The ads would have you believe that without cool clothes you’ll never be more than just a big loser when it comes to school.

You already know that it is important to try to look your best.  What we wear affects our confidence and other people’s confidence in us.  Dressing sharply gives others the impression that they are important to us - worth making an effort for – and of course, our clothes are a great way to express ourselves and what we’re thinking: it’s not for nothing that the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institution just wrapped an exhibit of the safety-pinned leather jackets and tartan pants of the Punk era.

But children, please don’t listen to all the back-to-school ads that try to tell you that the sum of what you are is what you wear.  Even the coolest clothes in the world won’t cement your “legacy of awesomeness” as much as your character will - at school or anywhere else.

I remember the outfit I chose for my first day of junior high. In elementary school a great outfit was simply an outfit in which I could play easily.  But in junior high I would have to leave playing behind; a great outfit in junior high was an outfit that showed you were grown up.

I decided on a side ponytail (brushing my hair so carefully so that I wouldn’t have any “bumps”), a purple long-sleeved shirt and overalls – yes, overalls.  I can’t tell you now just what I was thinking when I put this outfit together, but I can tell you that I put a lot of thought into it.  When I said goodbye to my parents and road off on my bike to my new junior high school I was glowing – I felt so grown up. 

Unfortunately this outfit did not “cement my legacy of awesomeness” as I hoped it would but instead cemented me as someone who, to this day, is always one step behind when it comes to fashion.  The “grown up” and “cool” look that year, I soon discovered, wasn’t overalls at all but Levi’s 501 jeans, which weren’t available in the children’s department of the Bay, where I had done my back-to-school shopping with my mom. 

What really makes or breaks us is being faithful to the principles we believe in, and one of the most important principles of any faith is being compassionate towards others. 

One of the coolest boys at my junior high school was Jon (of course he spelled his name without an ‘h’) and I had a big crush on him.  Because in most classes we were seated alphabetically myself and my friend, Kelly (who also happened to have a big crush on Jon), were the lucky girls who always got to sit next to him.  Now Kelly and I were not the cool girls at our school (remember that I was the kid who wore overalls on the first day of gr. 7).  If you were concerned about "cementing your legacy of awesomeness," you wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time talking to us.  

But Jon was a different kind of cool because, while he always looked great on the outside, he was also a person of character - a genuinely nice guy with a lot of compassion for others.  Most of the really popular people at my junior high were popular because they were somehow intimidating to the rest of us, but Jon was popular because he was kind.  Everyone liked him because he really seemed to like everybody else.  Everybody wanted to be around him because he made sure everybody around him was having fun.  His jokes were funny, not just making fun, and to this day I can’t recall him ever saying a mean barb or sarcastic comment to anyone.  If you polled the girls at our school I think you would have found that it wasn’t just Kelly and I who had a crush on him.

I never saw Jon after grade 9; we went to different high schools and I’m not sure where he’s at or what he’s up to today.  He might have a great job, a big house, a lot of money, or he might not.  But one thing is certain: he managed to cement a legacy of awesomeness not because he looked better than everybody else, but because he genuinely cared about everybody else.  He didn’t stand out for me at the time because of what he might be some day, or how cool his clothes were or how many parties he got invited to; he stood out simply because he took a stand, for kindness, for compassion, for goodness, for fun, for friendship and, most importantly, for humility – for thinking of others now and again and not only of himself.  Not surprisingly, he’s one of the only people whose names I can actually remember from my junior high school – a legacy of awesomeness if there ever was one. 

So when you get dressed for that all-important first day back at school, don’t forget that nothing makes you look as good as all the goodness that’s already inside of you.  Your character will always be your greatest accessory.