Prepare. Report. Repeat. Failure keeps everyone employed.

There’s tending in pretending. Lies don’t water themselves.

There’s a jar in jargon. That’s where they keep the bullshit.

There’s lay in slay. Apparently, dressing to kill was never about murder.

There’s total in totalitarianism. Partial oppression was never an option.

There’s a path in pathology. Empathy took a different route.

Another curious paradox about Karl Lagerfeld. He admired his father’s elegant high collars and made them part of his signature look. His mother refused to let him wear glasses as a child because she considered them ugly. Later, she encouraged him to wear tinted lenses instead. He adopted them, eventually making sunglasses inseparable from his public identity. Yet Lagerfeld admitted that without glasses, he saw his mother’s face in the mirror. He didn’t want to be a “bad copy” of her. His sunglasses may have shielded him from seeing his mother’s reflection in himself, while concealing that resemblance from others. Perhaps Lagerfeld’s most carefully designed creation was his own identity. After all, originality may not be freedom from influence, but the transformation of what we inherit into something uniquely our own.

There is a wonderful paradox about Karl Lagerfeld. A man who spent his life manufacturing novelty for others made himself iconic through repetition. Perhaps the ultimate luxury in fashion is no longer having to follow it. Yet his sunglasses revealed another paradox. A man who devoted his life to the art of appearance was remarkably deliberate about what his own appearance concealed. Was he protecting the man behind the image, or the image from the man behind it?

At first, grey hair felt like a sign of aging. Then I realized it was a sign of growing wisdom. Apparently, wisdom adds volume. Literally.