Shave

I just realized how long my hair is. You’d think that it might be longer, given the amount of time that I’ve been growing it out, but I’ve always been happy with the way it was, even if people (sometimes even friends) did not approve. Such is the point of my lonely topic of discussion today. While anyone out there may not know who I am, usually, I feel confident saying that change has happened. Not entirely in myself, but of the people around me as well. Everything is about keeping up with someone else, keeping busy for the next project, keeping an established line of credit. Maybe in the next life, I’ll know exactly what to do with my time, but right now, it seems that every day is one closer to death in the best way possible. Our existence has to mean something. Do it for yourself if you’re not going to make it for anyone else. If we knew that we were going to be here forever, we might not be so inclined to start up something, or better yet, finish something, as we would know that we have an indescribable amount of time to complete it.

How this plays back to the hair. I’ve been thinking about cutting it off. It’s just hair right? And cutting it seems much more convenient than not cutting it. Is it really that big of a deal that my artistic expression would somehow cease to exist? And how is growing your hair long an expression of self anyhow? Matt Goodwin told me that if I cut it off, I’d magically be unable to play the guitar anymore. Borderline cliché. I still somehow feel attached to it, how odd right? It’s only growing out of my skull. But you might know exactly what I’m talking about. You might have your own hair to cut off to let loose some of the emotional baggage and wax that you carry around on your back every single day only because you feel the overwhelming need to cling to it. My hair is not my safety blanket, but I know that it could be. I know that it's hard enough to move on from something even if it's the hardest thing that you've ever had to do without trying also to worry about the once a day struggle of waking up and making an effort to be productive.

I know that there are a lot of people out there struggling to get back to who they think they really are. They want to be this or that, and continually make an outrageous effort to attain what they once were. I say different. I say we start thinking about where we would like to be. Where we are right now, and maybe in a little while, with a little bit of work we can get there. I wouldn’t spend too much time worrying about how to get back to some comfort zone that you could call home. Experience this as home. Where you stand, make a living, have friends and family who care about you and that once you’ve come to grips with everything that seems to be bothering you about who you are and what you’ve done and the problems that you face today, you might realize that you’ve been home the entire time. Home is where you make it, where you die happy.

So I think in writing this, I’ve convinced myself not to cut off the dead strands protruding from my head. Not because I don’t think it’s convenient or because I want to feel better about it at the end of the day, but because it is a part of me now, I’m not done with it, and when I want it to begin anew, I guess I’ll shave my head.