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Vanity of Vanities

Sometimes I wake up in the morning not knowing what I want to write. Those days are fairly frustrating for me. I stare at the screen and ask, "what do you want me to write today?" An answer always comes, but it is usually very difficult to get to it.

Other days, I know exactly what I want to write and I can hardly to get to it. Those days, the article just flows out of me with hardly any effort. I love those days.

Today is different than either of those. I know what I want to write, but I don't want to write it. It is a bit of a mixup for me. I don't have to stare at the screen, but I find myself doing it. I am hoping that something else will come to mind and I can leave my thoughts for another day. It is not working. So here goes.

The Cover Up

The picture that you see at the beginning of this post is a picture of my long hair. It was taken on the day I cut if off. I grew it out for a year, the curl is natural. It is actually much longer than it looks. As you can see, it is looking very full and beautiful.

The picture that you see under this heading is also of me and my beautiful hair. It was taken on the same day, less than three minutes before the above photo was shot.

Your eyes are not deceiving you and I am not wearing a Kippah. I have a pretty good bald spot growing on the top of my head that is hard to see in my portraits. I was able to use a product called Good Looking Hair. As you can see, it really works. It is hard to tell in the photos, and even harder to identify in person. Even my mother was fooled. 

Vanity Of Vanities

The more I used the product, the more I enjoyed it. I felt a sense of confidence that I had not experienced for some time. I sometimes feel like everybody is looking at my bald spot, with Good Looking Hair, I never worried about it. I knew that if they were looking, they would see nothing. 

I only experienced a couple of problems. I like to wear white shirts and the product would sometimes flake off onto my collar area leaving black marks. Also, if I touched my hair with my hands, I would usually get black powder all over me. It made it difficult to scratch my head because when I did my fingernails would be packed with the stuff. Sometimes, the scratching would also remove the product from the bald spot, which would create a very interesting looking hole in the illusion.

When I cut my hair, the product worked even better. It made my short hair look full and so I was willing to live with the risk of accidently wiping it off. Believe it or not, my head began to itch more than normal and I had to find ways to scratch without getting the product in my fingernails or disrupting the pattern which I knew would create a new and much more noticeable bald spot. This worry began to dominate my thinking and though I learned how to manage it, I began to feel like a fraud. Why couldn't I just be comfortable with my normal hair, like I was before I began to grow it out? Why did I feel like I needed to cover it up? Why was I all of sudden feeling so vain about my hair?

The Authentic Me

These gyrations made me feel a bit phony when I would write my Authentic Me columns. I tried to rationalize it by saying that many of the people I work with are doing something unnatural to enhance their image. I wore braces to straighten my teeth, why can't I wear this spray on hair, to make my hair look better. I know people who have turned to plastic surgery to enhance their bodies. Almost everybody whitens their teeth these days, and the advances in hair transplants will most likely make the Good Looking Hair product obsolete. 

Why are we so obsessed with these types of enhancements? I think I know the answer. They make us feel younger. The natural sagging, dimming, balding, greying and yellowing makes us feel old. They are the signs that we are losing our younger selves. They add to the common belief that the aging process is a losing process. The older we get the more we lose.

It frustrates me when we only speak of the losses that come with aging. To me, there is so much more. In fact, I think we gain much more than we lose.

Looking Forward 

The other day, my friend asked me if I would be willing to go back 20 years if I was given that option. I told him that I had no interest in doing that. Then I told him that if I had to chose between going back 20 years or forward 20 years, that I would definitely choose to go forward. He seemed a bit bemused, so I told him why. 

I love my life. There are so many wonderful things about it. Each passing year puts me into a new phase that seems so much more complete than my previous experiences. I like the "maturing me", so much better than the "young and impetuous me". I love who I am becoming. I don't want to miss any of the moments that will get me there, but I can't wait to see what I am like in the future. I feel so much opportunity ahead of me. Of course, I see that these new opportunities are very different than the ones that were presenting themselves to me 20 years ago – I am ok with that. I like where I am headed and I feel like I am creating a life of wholeness. I don't have nearly as many fears or insecurities as I did 20 years ago. Each day, I am becoming more and more comfortable with who I am and less and less interested in covering up my bald spots.

The Mature You

This may be a new way of looking at things for you. I invite you to consider the following questions. I think it will help you see what I see.  

What do you love about yourself?

What gains you are incurring as you age?

What bald spots are you still afraid to reveal?

I feel so much better now that I wrote about my use and abuse of the Good Looking Hair product. I don't need it any more. I no longer fear that my fake hair will suddenly flake off. I am now free to just be me, and that is why life is so incredibly good.

Live Today! Love Today!

Andrew Thorn

760-559-3548

Tags: Andrew Thorn, Authenticity, Carpe Articulum, Game of Life, Heart Might Mind & Strength, Leader Behaviors, Life is Good, Life Leadership Harmony, Personal Best Leadership, Second Half of Life, Spiritual Intelligence, The Authentic Me, The Game of Life, The Telios Experience

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 5:45 pm and is filed under Authentic Behavior. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.