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Ah...hair today, gone tomorrow
By Chandroo D.

One of the great mysteries in life is baldness which affects more men, then women. I started to lose mine at 40, and am partially bald since then and let me tell you - my life has NOT come to an end.

Hair! What a thing! People spend millions trying to grow it. Others spend even more to get rid of it. Some do both, though on different parts of their bodies.

Baldness has created a multi-billion dollar vanity industry in products and services to grow it, remove it, groom and clean it, dye it, straighten it, curl or wave it, and artificially replace it. Yet it serves no practical function of any sort, as it is dead tissue.

Our hair grows. We cut it and in between we spend countless hours on it.  Presently, someone up there is reducing the growth of my hair, as I hardly visit my barber.   If I start to use Regaine and try to look young like Elvis again, my wife will obviously suspect me of having an extra marital affair with a younger woman!

We can get in other people's hair (to annoy). We let our hair down (relax).  We split hairs (make petty distinctions). Things can make our hair stand on end (terrify), or we might be having a bad hair day (an unpleasant day). Sometimes literally! I have seen a bride in tears in a family wedding just because she felt her hair wasn't done as well as she had hoped.

No outfit is complete without a dog hair on it... No gourmet meal complete without a cat hair in it… No life is whole without a four-footed furry friend to be loved and loved by.

For someone who has undergone chemotherapy treatment, if it were not for a substitute wig or toupee, life would be miserable.

Seriously, what is put on a driver's license when the driver is bald? Does it say "bald"?  I once interviewed an applicant where the man described his hair color as "grey" but it was clear to me that he hadn't been grey for a REALLY long time because he was awfully bald when I met him.

The Buddhist monks and nuns take vows to get rid of the hair on their heads.  It symbolizes the separation from this real world.  Amazing, but the witchdoctors require one strand of the hair for the idol to represent the person in order to heal or torture magically.

Try and hide it? Comb the side over the top? Get a short cut and hope the bald patches don’t show!  You can make a joke of it, but the truth is there’s nothing funny about losing your hair. It’s cold in winter, your scalp burns in summer and when you look in the mirror you look and feel older and self conscious looking back into a time when you used to be attractive and confident.

Samson lost his strength with the loss of his hair.  As for me, with the loss of my hair, I too lost my youth and strength but I do not intend to find a way to restore it.  The best thing would be to restore my self-esteem because I owe it to myself to be the man I used to be.

 

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