What’s natural, anyway?

When I was in junior high, I started on the first of many attempts to get fit and control my weight. My mother devised an eating and exercise plan, and I stuck to it faithfully, doing at least one hundred sit ups every day. Sure enough my belly muscles got very strong but my stomach wasn’t entirely flat. My mother pointed out that I could hold my tummy in with those rock hard abs, and then it would be flat. Honestly the idea had never occurred to me, and I sort of thought it was cheating and not natural, that my belly should just be flat as it was with no sucking in of the gut.

Fast forward to today. Last week, after growing out my hair to its salt-and-pepper state, I colored it dark again. And I found myself dreading in advance the negative comments I think I’ll hear from family members.

It seems as though many people believe they have a right, almost a duty to voice unsolicited negative opinions on almost everything. And sure enough I’ve gotten comments like that about my hair from a few family members—probably not the ones who read this blog, but family members nonetheless. And really, who cares what color my hair is? It’s just dead protein and I’ve happened to color that dead protein a darker color than those people like. That’s fine, we all have opinions. It’s just that not all opinions need to be shared, especially negative ones about stuff that doesn't matter in the scheme of life. After all, it’s my hair, and next year it might be purple. Well OK probably not but still if I want to color my hair purple, I will.

And if you’ve read this far and are curious, I did it for three reasons. First, I get bored with my hair pretty easily and I was ready for a change. Second, the job market is not exactly picking up but I am seeing more postings and unfortunately age discrimination—while nearly impossible to prove—most definitely exists. The silver needed to be mitigated. Finally, I got lowlights for a while because I have one area on my part line that is really silvery, so it was very obvious. The lowlights helped cut that a bit. But they are really pricey. My hairdresser is working with me on this a lot and because it’s a single process rather than the low lights, I can get a good price break on it.

I’m comfortable with my hair like this. So let's raise a glass to live and let live.