I like to think that people go through a lot of personal change during their early to mid-20s. Part of that may relate to how one stands out in a crowd. In my experience, people enter their 20s wanting to stand out and leave their 20s wanting to be part of the masses. Of course, everyone has that natural crave to be a special snowflake, which I think is amplified in the early adulthood haze of sudden responsibilities. A young person enters the real world all on their own and realises they are stuck in a college auditorium or behind a coffee shop counter, and feel like they are the masters of their own small worlds. Why not reinvent yourself?

I know because I went through this phase in my late teens and early 20s. Looking back, with somewhat shame-infused nostalgia, there was one instance of self reinvention that I would like to discuss now. Just as many other contemporaries of mine, especially the socially impaired males, I latched on to the idea of owning a specific piece of apparel. A fedora, to be precise. Now, I never went as far as to actually own one, I just had the idea that wearing fedora would be a part of my new self image. Who knows, if I actually crossed the line of purchasing one I might’ve eventually gone even beyond that; growing a neckbeard and complaining about women on the internet. Incidentally, I have absolutely no shame in actually admitting all this because I believe this phase was an important part of my life because it led to a paramount realisation.

There is a creature in fantasy fiction literature called a lich. A lich is an undead being, able to cheat death by placing its spirit in an external object and thus being able to recover from being destroyed physically. Think of Sauron in The Lord of the Rings or Voldemort in Harry Potter.

Just like a lich with its spirit, I was seeking to transfer my own personality into a piece of clothing. I was not looking for something that would make me interesting to the world, I was looking for something that could be interesting on my behalf. In other words, I was willing to let the fedora become my own personality.

You probably see these people everyday; people who do wear clothes or accessories that are not meant to add to the wearer’s interesting characteristics but to replace them. A fedora is usually that; you wear it and you think it makes you look classy because you think it has some inherent class, not because you think you have any class whatsoever without the hat and the hat just amplifies it. There was a time I thought like this and only narrowly dodged that bullet, but there are people out there who think so and act on it. And no offence in any way, you are entitled to wear whatever you want and look as stupid as you want. You just happen to be a personality lich.

I realised that if you put effort in making the external interesting instead of the internal, you become a side character in your own story. It’s the hat who’s the main character if you want people to notice it instead of your own natural personality. I’m sure everyone has something that makes them special, a unique combination of preferences and opinions. Work on them, make yourself about yourself. Don’t become a personality lich; cast the fedora into the fire!