After years of use, a bag will show wear—its leather scuffed, its threads frayed, even its metal fittings dulled. There is a type of bag that, after a hundred years, stays strong. It can open and close many times. Its rivets are still secure and unchanged. This brings to mind something else entirely.
Rivets are small things.
When regular people buy a bag, they notice the leather, style, and price. They rarely look at the plain metal studs. Little do they know, it is precisely these insignificant details that determine the bag’s lifespan. The rivets on old bags are often simple and plain. Yet, they hold on tightly, as if they are part of the leather. At the same time, those shiny new bags have fancy gold rivets that can loosen and fall off. This can ruin the whole bag in just a few months.
So it is with the world.
Grand narratives, mistaking spectacle for substance, often beguile us. Yet true resilience usually lies in the minutiae. The ancients, when building bridges, prioritized the piers; modern builders, when erecting towers, first consider the foundation. Among the structures that have stood for millennia, not a single one owes its endurance to the tiles on its façade. External beauty fades; internal solidity endures. Rivets are to a bag what virtue is to a person—unseen in ordinary times, but unmistakable when put to the test.
I once saw a briefcase from the Republican era—its owner long gone, yet the bag passed down to his grandson.
The rivets on it were black and gleaming, sturdier than today’s stainless steel. Modern bags can rust and fall apart within six months of use. This is similar to short-lived ideas and slogans. Our grandparents tried to fix things when they broke. In contrast, we often replace items at the first sign of wear. Between repair and replacement lies not just an economic calculation, but a moral ledger.
The secret of the unyielding rivet lies in fine materials and meticulous craftsmanship.
The old artisans forged rivets not for speed, but for precision. Today’s factories churn them out by the hundreds per minute, indifferent to how long they’ll last. Speed and quality have always been at odds. What is made quickly often perishes. There’s wisdom in the saying, “Slow work yields fine results.” Those century-old bags likely took a long time to reach their owners’ hands.
People are like bags.
To judge if someone is reliable, you don’t need to hear their big speeches. Just watch how they deal with everyday tasks. Are they punctual? Trustworthy? Do they repay debts? Keep promises? These trivial details, much like the rivets on a bag, reveal their true nature over time. Big talk is easy; small deeds are hard. Those whose “rivets” have never fallen out in a lifetime are the real luxuries.
Our era has no shortage of glossy new bags—what’s lacking are the old ones whose rivets remain intact.
The new ones strut in shop windows, while the old ones lie quietly in corners, still doing their work. People chase novelty, grow weary of the old, yet forget to ask: Are the discarded things truly inferior? Or have we simply lost the ability to appreciate lasting beauty?
The century-old bags, their rivets still in place, sit in the corner, silently mocking this ephemeral age.
