The Existential Philosophy Of A Haircut
It seems like everyone has their own struggles, I mean during the lockdown, not in general because that would make this a long post.
Today I’m comparing lockdown mental health problems with my hair problems, which yeah definitely seems comparable.
We were all taken by surprise by the Lockdown, which began this eventful journey. Like everyone else, I had not gone through anything like this before, so the only logical way to deal with this seemed to be growing out my hair. The Lockdown began pretty simply, just living out one day at a time. It was fun to think that since I’d gotten a break from the day to day lifestyle, I could now actually take care of my hair and structure it the way I wanted. My hair started suffering small problems, which I would ignore as they’d automatically get sorted when the hair would grow longer, weighing down the problem and taking it somewhere deeper.
I learned many new things, watched multiple YouTube videos, and tried to imitate those YouTubers. It obviously didn’t come out the same as it was in the videos, but it was something at least. I tried to change my hair growth direction to give it a bit more volume and personality. Little did I know that it would be my biggest mistake. Instead of volume, I ended up getting more curls and frizzy hair. I guess this means that we should not try to mold our hair into someone else’s style because each person’s hair is different. Huh, who could’ve known this?
Despite the setbacks, I was still having fun trying to figure out what to do with my hair. We don’t really care about our hair that much in childhood; maybe some people do, but most of us are too busy goofing around. We play in the dirt, expose it to the sun all day, make headers from a dirty ass football and just let it loose, only going to the saloon when our mum says it’s time. But for the first time in forever (yes, I made a Frozen reference, and I don’t care), I had the time and the power actually to deal with it.
Time went by quickly, though, and I started giving my hairless attention day by day. Lockdown started extending, and we all remained stuck with ourselves and our messy hair. I personally stopped giving a shit after a while.
I couldn’t take care of them 24/7; I had to do other things too, so I brought in the big guns to take care of them- the hairband. It’s basically a jail for hair, and it succeeded in keeping them in check for a while, but I guess you can’t keep things bottled up for long. Some days the hairband would come off, and then the trouble would begin. All the emotions, oh sorry, all the hair would come loose, and oh, it was not pretty. Frankly put, it was a hideous sight to behold. The hair got to such a length where my mum once again had to intervene and tell me that it was time to deal with it. It’s human psychology to want something more when someone tells you that you can’t have it, so being the independent and rebellious child I am, I ignored the advice of the people who cared about me.
A special occasion came soon in the form of Rakhi. That day, I took a bath early morning (which, if you know me, is a big deal), got into my traditional Indian clothes, and combed my hair to look decent. I was all ready to take a picture for Instagram, but when I opened the camera, I saw a well-dressed man with a head mess. It was then that I realized that I could try to clean up however nice I wanted to, but as long as my head was messed up, it wouldn’t work.
This marked a new beginning, where I tried to listen to what my hair wanted to say, and the only way to do that is by plugging in earphones playing a hype song to zone out the outside noise while you just lay still and think. I already had a playlist for this so that I’d be all set in situations likes these.
My solution for any pickle is to cut out the problem from its roots (which would be quite literal here), but nobody wanted a bald fat beardless Indian dude, so I compromised and decided to get a normal haircut.
I went out with one of my friends to go to the barbershop, and apparently, all the shops are closed on a Tuesday, so that turned out to be a huge failure (that’s what he said, he is your dad, ah that’s a conversation for another time). Then my mood changed, and I didn’t want to get them cut for a few days. After a couple of days, I once again wanted to get a haircut, but none of my friends were ready to go with me on that day, and I didn’t want to go alone, so the plan was dropped. The plan also got dropped a couple of times after that due to some “unavoidable” circumstances like the car being out of gas, my mom not being home to give me money, and other stuff.
After a while again, I laid down music on and got the whole thinking vibe going on, which came out-.
I thought that it wasn’t a coincidence that I hadn’t been able to cut my hair; God himself wanted me with my beautiful luscious long hair. This meant that God loves me. Considering how long he had lived, I am just a kid to him. That proves it; God is a gay pedophile. I guess that explains all those Catholic priests.
These thoughts made me realize how messed up I’d become (still funny, though) and that it was time for a haircut. I called my friend, and surprisingly enough of them agreed the first time, and we finally went out. On our way, another one of our friends who had earlier blown us off suddenly wanted to tag along with us now. Huh, things start getting into place if we know what we want to do? Now, this is just brand new information; we should tell people about this. So anyways, like typical North-Indians, we drove around in the car for a while just talking, singing cringe songs, and talking about our past screw-ups. Like that, we were in front of the shop and ready for a new look (on life).
Spoiler Alert: the haircut didn’t actually come out how I pictured it or how I wanted it to be, but at least my hair isn’t coming in front of my eyes, causing a dark life.