At Berkeley, you wore a hoodie and pajamas and Birkenstocks, and

The words of Jaylen Brown—“At Berkeley, you wore a hoodie and pajamas and Birkenstocks, and that's swag. I was so thrown off. What I thought was cool wasn't cool no more, so I thought about what I actually liked. I started experimenting. I started wearing Birkenstocks. I wanted to dive into the culture.”—are far more than a reflection on style or fashion. They are a meditation on identity, adaptation, and the courage to redefine oneself in a changing world. Spoken by a man known for both his intellect and athletic prowess, these words carry the weight of a universal truth: that growth begins when we allow the walls of certainty to crumble, and that what we call “cool” often reveals more about our environment than our essence.

When Jaylen Brown entered the world of Berkeley—an environment rich with diversity, rebellion, and free thought—he encountered a culture that upended his assumptions about what it meant to belong. What once symbolized confidence and coolness in one world—flash, status, swagger—had no power in another. Instead, humility, comfort, and authenticity were the new measures of individuality. To many, such a discovery might cause confusion or insecurity, but Brown turned inward. Instead of clinging to his old image, he paused to ask the deeper question: “What do I truly like? Who am I beneath the surface?” In doing so, he began the ancient journey of self-discovery, a journey every thoughtful soul must take if they wish to live truthfully.

This confrontation between one’s outer image and inner truth is not new. The ancients spoke of it often. Socrates, standing before the youth of Athens, urged them to “know thyself,” for he knew that most men live their lives wearing the garments of others’ approval. Similarly, when Prince Siddhartha Gautama—who would become the Buddha—stepped beyond the walls of his palace, he was “thrown off” by the world’s suffering and simplicity, just as Brown was by Berkeley’s unexpected culture. In that shock lay transformation. The prince abandoned luxury, Brown abandoned pretense; both sought something real. The message is eternal: when the world surprises you, let it teach you rather than threaten you.

In Brown’s quote, the mention of Birkenstocks and pajamas may seem mundane, yet it carries symbolic power. They represent comfort over performance, authenticity over display, and the freedom to belong without pretense. By embracing what had once seemed foreign or uncool, Brown was not surrendering his identity—he was expanding it. He was learning, as all wise souls do, that to understand a culture is not to judge it from the outside but to step into it with curiosity. This humility, this willingness to adapt and learn, is what separates the rigid from the enlightened.

What Brown experienced at Berkeley mirrors the journey of countless seekers across time. When the Greek philosopher Diogenes cast away his possessions to live simply in a barrel, others mocked him for his strange choices. Yet Diogenes was freer than all his critics, for he no longer served the