I recently visited a new hairdresser with some trepidation. Since my years in the music industry, I’ve taken pride in my long hair and have always been quite particular about how it was cut. So trusting a new stylist with it has always been a worry.
Needless to say, my request of just 1cm off was lost in the gusts of his chatter when the first scissor cut sliced through my beloved locks and the chunks dropped to the floor in piles at the whim of the barbers hands.
For a while after I was quite taken back and somewhat angry until I asked myself why. Was my ‘aging rockstar’ look something my ego was so attached to that I was going to let it ruin my day/week/month? And who am I now anyway? Certainly not the 25-year-old pimple-ridden buck I once was. So what is this attachment I have to any uniform I associate myself with?
Only a few weeks later, I found myself going into town to pick up some shopping looking (as my wife suggested as I left) like Jack Nicholson on a bad day. But as I caught myself in the car mirror, I realised with delight, I just didn’t care. I’m 62 and have no attachment anymore to my looks. I’m comfortable with who I am and if anyone of going to look down on me for looking like a dog’s dinner, that’s absolutely fine. Poke away!
Our illusions about who we are and what club we decide to attach ourselves to with the clothes and looks we clad ourselves in, is as thin as the cloth they are made out of. We are greater than that single attachment and the sooner we relinquish our association to it, the sooner we’ll discover our inner Jack Nicholson! I can’t recommend it highly enough.