Chop and...awe?

"Ever notice that "what the hell" is always the right decision?" 

--Marilyn Monroe

I chopped off all of my hair a few weeks ago. I mean ALL of it. I got out the clippers, slapped on a #8 and went to town.

A lot of people have asked me why, and I have been trying to formulate an answer that makes sense - to myself.

Because the truth is I don't really know WHY. (Do we ever?)

Here are some of the reasons....

The idea first came to me when I was reading "When Things Fall Apart" by Pema Chodron, an American Buddhist nun, who wears her hair in a similar fashion. I wondered if having your hair cut so short made it easier to access the Divine, since all Buddhist monks and nuns have this haircut.

It made sense to me in a funny way that really short hair would help, if only by forcing you to focus on something other than your looks.

Which leads nicely into reason #2: As the holidays reached their peak, I began to really resent the time I was spending on my hair. Wash it. Dry it. Style it. Dye it. I began to long for short, easy hair.

So I started to cut it. Myself.

First, I bobbed it. That lasted about a week, until I realized that was just as much work as long hair.

So I went after it again - trying for a Pixie cut - but somehow I just kept cutting until it all ended up on the floor.

Right after I did it I was SO happy. I felt FREE. STRONG. POWERFUL. Like a beautiful Amazon Warrior. "Give me a spear and send me out to hunt some bison" kind of strong.

It was a beautiful winter day and we took the kids to a park where we all ran around and breathed in the clean, fresh air. It was fabulous.

But on Monday the weather turned cold and dreary again. I was freezing and kind of wishing I had all of my hair back.

Plus, I had started to wonder if it was just plain unattractive. Everyone had reacted well to it and I was getting lots of complements, but I still had this idea that "some people" were not going to like it.

So I had to ask myself: Do I care what "some people" think?

I wish the answer were a resounding, "NO," but I am not quite there yet.

I DO care what people think of me - I think that's only human - but that gets to the final reason that I wanted to do this in the first place.

I am still me, for better and for worse, and I think having this haircut makes that abundantly clear.

I can no longer hide behind my long hair and pretty accouterments. This haircut puts me out there in the world in a way that I was not before. Kind of pushes me to the front lines, which is where I say I want to be.

I have this idea that there is a way to be in the world that is peaceful and loving and awe-filled all of the time. That is what I am searching for. And while I don't believe a haircut can give that to me, maybe it can help me find it.