There are four laws of thermodynamics, all outlining the fundamental rules of life.

Together, they describe the relationship between thermal heat and other forms of energy, or in other words, how energy affects matter. The second law of thermodynamics states (briefly summarized and very much simplified) that what is hot eventually always will cool down.

This is a universal truth about all things: disorder, characterized as a quantity known as entropy, always increases with time. As one of the laws of nature, heat will inevitably cool down.

Entropy follows linear time. A broken egg can’t be made whole again. Heat turns to cold; order becomes disorder and this sequence of events cannot be reversed.

The example of the egg makes the abstract theory concrete and understandable. But there are also more existential dimensions to the principle.

As energy is transformed from one state to another – as the previously intact egg is cracked, for example – more and more of it will be wasted. 

When we are born, the future still appears undecided. All major events lie ahead of us and nothing has yet happened.

With each moment, through a myriad of conscious and unconscious decisions, we shape the life that we are to lead. Our bodies develop, mature and we come of age. As young individuals, it is not uncommon to experiment with different expressions of identity, to play with fashion in order to figure out what we want to communicate about ourselves to others.

But when the order begins to transform into disorder, when our bodies begin to break down and deteriorate, when our physical selves no longer function or appear as they used to, many lose interest in thinking about their appearance. 

The unpublished manuscript for the novella Misunderstanding in Moscow (Malentendu à Moscou) was found in Simone de Beauvoir’s belongings after her death.

It outlines the journey of an aging couple, on a trip to Moscow, bored with one another, with their life together and perhaps also with themselves. In one scene, the female protagonist reflects on the relationship between fashion and age, as she stores away some of her garments in a hotel room:

“By the time she was fifty, she always thought her garments were either too gloomy or too colourful. Nowadays, she knew what she could allow herself and not, and she dressed without worry. But also without pleasure. The intimate, almost loving relationship she used to have with her garments had disappeared. She put away a dress in the closet, and even though she had worn it for two years, it was an insignificant, impersonal object, in which she found nothing of herself.” 

What de Beauvoir is describing by detailing the relationship a middle-aged woman has with her dress, is how people, on a very individual level, might deal with the effects of the second principle of thermodynamics.

Disorder is relentlessly taking over, and unable to reverse the process, or even stop it for a moment, the only option left is managing it, attempting to age as gracefully as possible.

However, understanding that this is part of the cycle of nature, and that it follows the development of all things in the universe, can allow for a greater understanding of this process.