By Jussara Da Silva
We often hear the phrase you are what you eat. It has become one of the most familiar ideas about health. We understand instinctively that our bodies are shaped by what we repeatedly consume. A single meal changes very little, but years of eating gradually become visible in our health, our energy and the way we feel.
Yet I have often wondered why we rarely apply the same idea to our minds.
Because we consume far more than food.
Every day we consume images, opinions, advertisements, conversations, headlines, trends and other people’s lives. We consume beauty. We consume outrage. We consume aspiration. We consume thousands of moments without ever asking what they are leaving behind. Perhaps we have become so accustomed to consuming that we no longer notice we are doing it.
The internet has given us access to almost everything, but it has also quietly turned almost everything into something to consume. A museum becomes content. A runway show becomes a fifteen-second clip. A book becomes a collection of highlighted quotes. A person’s life becomes entertainment. Even fashion, once something people experienced slowly through magazines, exhibitions and conversation, now arrives as an endless stream of images that disappear almost as quickly as they appear.
We rarely stop long enough to ask what all of this is doing to us.
Not because each image is powerful on its own, but because nothing we consume ever exists in isolation.
We often imagine that influence happens dramatically. We think one documentary changes our perspective, one conversation transforms our thinking or one book alters the course of our lives. Sometimes that happens. More often, however, we are shaped quietly. Not by one image, but by ten thousand. Not by one opinion, but by hearing the same opinion often enough that it slowly begins to sound like our own. Not by one trend, but by seeing it repeatedly until it no longer feels like a trend at all—it simply feels normal.
Perhaps the greatest influence is not intensity.
It is repetition.
Think about the people you admire. The places you dream of visiting. The homes that feel beautiful to you. The colours you are naturally drawn towards. The clothes that seem elegant. How many of those preferences were entirely your own? And how many arrived after years of quietly seeing the same ideas repeated again and again?
We like to believe we choose our taste independently.
But our taste is constantly being educated.
This is why I have become increasingly careful about what I consume. Not because I believe everything around me should be beautiful or inspiring, but because everything I repeatedly return to is quietly teaching me something. The books I read shape the questions I ask. Museums teach me how to observe. Designers teach me what I consider meaningful. Conversations teach me what deserves my attention. Even silence teaches me something.
Nothing enters our lives without leaving a trace.
Perhaps this is why personal style can never truly begin with shopping. A wardrobe is simply the visible result of everything that came before it. Before we choose a coat, we have already spent years deciding what deserves our attention. Before we create anything, we have already spent years consuming someone else’s creations. Every creative decision is built upon thousands of invisible influences that came before it.
Everything is connected.
In many ways, we spend more time curating our wardrobes than we do curating our minds. We think carefully about the clothes we allow into our homes, yet rarely think about the ideas, images and voices we allow into our attention every single day. And yet one shapes the other. The things we repeatedly consume eventually become the lens through which we see the world.
Perhaps the greatest luxury today is not owning beautiful things.
Perhaps it is having the freedom to choose what enters your mind.
To decide what deserves your attention. To refuse the endless stream of images constantly competing to shape your perception. Because attention has quietly become one of the most valuable resources we possess. Wherever our attention goes, our lives slowly follow.
We are often encouraged to curate our wardrobes.
Perhaps we should spend just as much time curating our minds.
Because every image, every book, every conversation, every painting, every film, every article and every person we repeatedly return to is participating in the person we are becoming. It is shaping our taste, our judgement, our desires and, ultimately, the way we move through the world.
The question is no longer whether we consume.
We all do.
The real question is much more important.
What is your consumption creating?
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