Stir What You Got

Age creeps up on all of us. It’s a tale as old as time. I never really cared too much when I started seeing wrinkles. A few sprinkles of grey made me look wise in my early twenties. Going completely grey didn’t affect me either. In fact, I had enough compliments and people calling me a “silver fox,” I thought it was a good thing. When the hairs on my cheeks turned white, I finally felt like I looked old. 

However, the worst of all is that now my hair seems slightly thinner. Barbers still groan and exclaim how thick it is, spending a long time hacking away with the thinning shears. Suppose I let it grow out; it’s like a giant silver cotton ball on my head. But in my heart of hearts, it doesn’t resemble the thick forest it was in my thirties. 

I once mentioned this in front of my mom, and she said, “What I wouldn’t give to have hair that thin.” Which made me think about the irony.

And then there’s my cousin, rocking the bald look like a total boss. I can’t even imagine him with hair.

These contrasting perspectives on hair have made me stop and think about how we perceive ourselves, our appearances, and, more importantly, anything we have that someone else would be grateful for.

While I think it isn’t what it once was, someone might look at my hair and yearn for these silver locks. My hair is no longer good enough for me but good enough to be envied. 

But it doesn’t stop there.

How about living in the suburbs with hundreds of restaurants nearby and thinking, “There aren’t any good places to eat around here,” while someone in a small town has only one cafe and is content.

Not thinking you have enough money, even though all your bills are paid, and you are putting a bit in savings. At the same time, your friend is struggling to pay rent. Or, on the other side of the world, someone works twice as hard, makes half as much, and is elated!

Letting a pimple ruin your high school prom while pizza-face over there is having the time of his life.

We are all going to have something that we wish was better, and I’m in no way saying that we shouldn’t strive to make our lives better in whatever way we can, but at some point, we should accept what we have and appreciate it, even as we work to improve it. And if it can’t be improved or discarded entirely, we might as well work on acceptance.

Long ago, I heard a guy tell a story about this man who ordered an iced tea and kept adding sugar packets to make it sweeter. Eventually, he ran out of sugar packets and asked the waitress for more. Seeing the sugar resting at the bottom of his glass, the waitress exclaimed, “Why don’t you stir what you got?”