Unless you go bald first, most humans encounter a day when the white hair coming in over-populates the hair color of your youth. Rather than brown or black hair, the mixing in of white hair makes your mane look gray.
This happens slowly over time for most of us. Some guys are prematurely gray at 35, others see their first white hair poking up from the middle of their cowlick when they’re 40, and others stay dark-haired well into their later years, like former U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
If your change has been gradual, relatively speaking, as mine has, there are these odd moments where you look in the mirror and think about how you’ve passed some marker of time based on your new features. That happened to me last week during a haircut, when a man who remarkably resembled former Dallas Cowboys’ coach and former NFL television announcer Jimmy Johnson.
Known for his thick white mop, Johnson, if you’ve seen him in the media, is easily recognizable. This guy who came into the hair salon could have passed for his brother. He had the nose, the body build, the carriage, the eyes, and seemingly the hair.
He preceded me into the chair, so when I sat down with my stylist, his follicles were already clipped and laying on the ground. The exposure of his roots showed a lot more dark and changed the shape of his face. As his stylist swiveled him around, he no longer looked like Jimmy’s brother, but instead like someone from another family.
All the white hair deposited on the floor caused me to look down at the growing pile around my chair. Over the past few years, it’s been clear that more and more white falling hair tips littered the chair next to me as the scissors clipped away. Fifteen years ago those clippings were mostly black. Five years ago, they changed to a mixed look of dark and light.
This time, the white took over. It’s an odd revelation when see this, and say to yourself internally, “Hmmmm, my hair keeps thinning, and now it’s more white than black.” It’s recognition of aging, knowing you won’t turn back the clock. Instead, the clock keeps running in the same direction.
We implicitly know this, but there are times in life that markers (graying hair, thinning hairlines, expanding waistlines) get thrown our way, and cause us to pause a bit longer than usual and ponder where we’ve been and where we’re headed. It took a specific moment (that haircut) to drive home the message that, “Yeah, you are gray, dude.”
I’m not sure this means anything specifically, other than the recognition that life continues to change. There will be some things I probably shouldn’t or can’t do any more at my age, like trying to run a marathon, and some others that hopefully I’ll keep getting better at, like writing and understanding people and their unique perspectives.
Paying attention to moments like this also focus you on what’s ahead. You don’t worry so much about what’s behind. It’s in the past. The question becomes, “What comes next? What can I do better? What will I learn to help me grow, and give something back to others?”
Staying focused on the positives and the expansion of your personal learning curve keeps you centered on the more important things in life. Based on personal experience, that’s difficult. You fight inertia all the time. Dark hair goes gray, then white. But the white hair also teaches you new things, and that’s a lesson most of us will get at some point in life.
This happens slowly over time for most of us. Some guys are prematurely gray at 35, others see their first white hair poking up from the middle of their cowlick when they’re 40, and others stay dark-haired well into their later years, like former U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
If your change has been gradual, relatively speaking, as mine has, there are these odd moments where you look in the mirror and think about how you’ve passed some marker of time based on your new features. That happened to me last week during a haircut, when a man who remarkably resembled former Dallas Cowboys’ coach and former NFL television announcer Jimmy Johnson.
Known for his thick white mop, Johnson, if you’ve seen him in the media, is easily recognizable. This guy who came into the hair salon could have passed for his brother. He had the nose, the body build, the carriage, the eyes, and seemingly the hair.
He preceded me into the chair, so when I sat down with my stylist, his follicles were already clipped and laying on the ground. The exposure of his roots showed a lot more dark and changed the shape of his face. As his stylist swiveled him around, he no longer looked like Jimmy’s brother, but instead like someone from another family.
All the white hair deposited on the floor caused me to look down at the growing pile around my chair. Over the past few years, it’s been clear that more and more white falling hair tips littered the chair next to me as the scissors clipped away. Fifteen years ago those clippings were mostly black. Five years ago, they changed to a mixed look of dark and light.
This time, the white took over. It’s an odd revelation when see this, and say to yourself internally, “Hmmmm, my hair keeps thinning, and now it’s more white than black.” It’s recognition of aging, knowing you won’t turn back the clock. Instead, the clock keeps running in the same direction.
We implicitly know this, but there are times in life that markers (graying hair, thinning hairlines, expanding waistlines) get thrown our way, and cause us to pause a bit longer than usual and ponder where we’ve been and where we’re headed. It took a specific moment (that haircut) to drive home the message that, “Yeah, you are gray, dude.”
I’m not sure this means anything specifically, other than the recognition that life continues to change. There will be some things I probably shouldn’t or can’t do any more at my age, like trying to run a marathon, and some others that hopefully I’ll keep getting better at, like writing and understanding people and their unique perspectives.
Paying attention to moments like this also focus you on what’s ahead. You don’t worry so much about what’s behind. It’s in the past. The question becomes, “What comes next? What can I do better? What will I learn to help me grow, and give something back to others?”
Staying focused on the positives and the expansion of your personal learning curve keeps you centered on the more important things in life. Based on personal experience, that’s difficult. You fight inertia all the time. Dark hair goes gray, then white. But the white hair also teaches you new things, and that’s a lesson most of us will get at some point in life.