Beard
blogI have for the last three weeks been engaged in the difficult, time-consuming project of growing a beard.
Whilst this ostensibly involves no real activity (I haven’t sculpted or trimmed it, just given up shaving), it does require a significant mental shift.
People treat you differently, new facial textures demand attention, routines change, and looking in the mirror inspires a reassessment of who and what you are.
I am not sure what I am saying to the world by having a beard. Is it vanity or the lack of vanity? Have I given up on basic hygiene or am I advertising my masculinity? These questions puzzle me because I honestly don’t know what people are thinking. And as I think a lot about other people this makes me think more about what people are thinking about me.
Nevertheless, judgement is suspended because I am growing the beard experimentally. This thing that clings to my face is not a part of me, it is being held in the purgatory of the possible.
Your identity is a collection of decisions. By holding off on making a decision you are still making a decision. By contrast, the absence of a decision is the absence of identity. Strong identities are unpopular nowadays. We don’t much admire people like Philip Larkin, people who decide who they are in the twenties and live out those decisions until they die. We used to prefer chameleons like Madonna and David Bowie, stars who reflect the zeitgeist. But now it’s all about the cipher — people like Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga — an absence of identity, upon which we can project our desires.
I sometimes feel like a cipher, not because I can’t make decisions but because my decisions cancel each other out. I hate information overload and short attention spans, but have embraced a career whose coordinates are defined by the internet (i.e. the thing that has caused them).
With such cognitive dissonance it becomes tempting to procrastinate or avoid thinking at all. What if we make a decision that we come to regret? What if we find ourselves in a situation we can’t decide our way out of?
It is at this point that we should make long-term plans, escape routes that acknowledge the contradiction whilst looking towards a point in the future where they will be resolved.
Not sure where this leaves the beard though.