Hair Loss: Implications

Posted by J.R.

July 29, 2009

If anybody I know is going to have a quarter-life crisis anytime soon, it’s not going to be me. I finished with that years ago. I look at my hairline and I see it peeling back ever so slowly, and I know that the first signs of aging are upon me. I have been looking forward to them in the mirror, as the marks of youth have for so long seemed unfaithful to the person that I am.

Instinctively, any man’s response to hair loss is denial–at first. Grow a little extra, comb it over the affected area, and think about it later. As it becomes more difficult to ignore, accept the loss and purchase Rogaine and other similar products. Perhaps, if rich, consider grafting hair from other locations. A man’s instinctive response to a problem is to fix it.

But hair loss is not a problem: it is merely a symptom of mortality. If mortality were a problem to be solved, we would have more than fables regarding the fountain of youth. Mortality is the most beautiful thing we have. The reason the world is at all worthwhile to us is that we recently experienced it for the first time, and it therefore still has new things to offer us. We came, we saw, and maybe we didn’t conquer, but we breathed, and some of it was good… and so that we might understand that some of it was good, the rest was neutral or bad. For reference.

It’s not that I don’t instinctively want to preserve the status of my hairline. I do. Survival instincts are natural. But as we may learn from phobias: instincts commonly misfire. Open spaces are not inherently scary, nor are closed spaces, or in my case, dogs. Similarly, hair loss is a natural progression related to aging, and all that can be done to manage it is to accept it and progress happily forward towards the grave.

My survival instincts will be put to better use shunning industrially processed foods and excess fats. Baldness is not nearly as threatening as heart attacks.

Some shave their heads entirely and embrace the bald identity. Some develop a strange head-hugging hairstyle reminiscent of an egg wrapped in fur. I do not yet know which way the wind will blow on this one, but I do know which way it will not: I don’t need a toupee or grafts or a comb-over or any of the other paralytic traits which mark a narcissistic person incapable of accepting reality.

Let it fade.

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