I was on a train from Denmark to Sweden when I first noticed it. To be exact, I was in the bathroom on a train. I was washing my hands and was thinking about the good times of the trip, and how much I was enjoying life at that moment.
Then my eyes caught the back of my head in the mirror above the sink that was reflecting into a mirror on the wall behind me. It was the first time I saw my halo of baldness.
I’d feared that moment since my teens when someone made a comment that I had a high forehead. In college, my hairline pushed back further and further increasing my chances of someone, somewhere, someday describing me as bald. Any reminder of this fact put me in a bad mood, and could easily ruin a day or weekend.
I fought as hard as I could against male pattern baldness. I tried the special sprays, shampoos and vitamins. I wasn’t even thirty-years old before I considered having surgery. Fortunately for my unhealthy vanity, at the time I didn’t have the money.
When I moved to New York, I met a barber named Dr. Mike, who referred to himself as a doctor of hairology. On my first visit, he scolded me because I’d been getting my hair cut wrong.
“You’re poor right here, and you’re rich right there,” he said pointing to my hair with a comb. “When the poor is right next to the rich, it looks even poorer. The only way to make the poor look richer is by making the rich look poorer. You have to own what you have, young man.”
Dr. Mike was basically telling me that I couldn’t compensate for thinning patches of my hair by letting other areas stay full and thick. It’s a concept that holds true for many situations in life, but seemed especially pertinent when hearing it from a doctor of hairology.
The doctor/barber gave me the best haircuts of my life (for under $20) and inspired a new strategy for my vanity. Instead of trying to grow lush rice crops in an obvious desert fit only for cacti and tumbleweeds, I focused on farming potatoes and pumpkins on my biceps and chest. My intention was to keep people focused on the richness of my body, instead of the poorness of my head.
In my imagination, this worked for several years. But in reality was only another example of unhealthy vanity. Instead of building real strength in my mind and spirit where it mattered, I was attempting to create an illusion of a strong being.
Not long after I moved back to Louisiana, I went to my twentieth high school class reunion. It was great to see friends from my past, some of whom I hadn’t seen since graduation night. But I was still nervous that people who hadn’t seen me in twenty years would notice the wrinkles on my almost forty-year-old face, and the small patches of thinning hair on my equally aged head.
I’d worked out hard before that night, running five miles daily and spending several days a week at the gym. I pushed my body to its limits, hoping to reveal strength, while simultaneously hiding weakness.
My plan seemed to work for the first hour of the class reunion, mostly because it was dark. But one of my biggest fears came to life when I least expected it.
I was speaking to a classmate’s husband, who I’d met for the first time that night. During our conversation, a different classmate walked up to us.
“Look, Jacques,” she said. “You have a bald spot.”
She said it like she wanted me to do something about it. But it wasn’t a crumb that could be brushed off, or a rip that could be sewn up or a stain that could be removed with Shout. It was missing hair that despite my best efforts had moved on to my brush and shower drain.
Not sure how to respond, I simply replied, “Thank you.”
The classmate hurried away as quickly as she’d arrived, as if she’d only approached me to deliver the bad news. It felt like I’d been in a drive-by shooting, and my impulse was to run and take care of my wounds. But the gentleman I’d been talking to laughed, and then passed his hand over his almost completely baldhead.
“It used to bother me a lot when people started making bald jokes about me,” he said. “But the way I look at it is this. If the worst thing I have going wrong for me is losing my hair, then I’m doing all right. There are a lot more people with much bigger problems.”
The man made a lot of sense, and within a few minutes of talking with him, the years of angst carried in my mind and body began to slowly drift away. I wasn’t ready to stand under a florescent light at the reunion so everyone could see my bald spots, but I wasn’t as upset as I thought I would be about someone noticing my imperfections.
I was in the bathroom on a train going from Denmark to Sweden when I noticed it; that my insecurities can creep from out of nowhere and ruin a wonderful moment. But through the years, I’ve accepted my flaws and learned a valuable lesson; it’s okay to try and look your best until it becomes obsessive and blinds you with weakness. Building your mind and spirit is what will make you stronger. Forgetting vanity to focus on the bigger picture of life will bring you strength.
No comments:
Post a Comment