Cowlicks

My hair is growing back. 

It's way cool to watch the process.  And I've realized that I have no idea how my own personal hair actually works.  I never had summer buzz cuts.  I never really knew where the part really wanted to be, or where a very short version of my hair would want to go, given the chance.  It's always been long, so it's always hung down.  Now that it's super short, I can watch it and learn what it likes to do.

For example.  Right now the sides want to go back.  Not sure why, but they feel like they want to be smoothed back.  And, for better or worse, when I was joking around and putting it into a little Mohawk... well, it seemed to like that as well.  Two parts, on either side, with the hair going into the middle.  That seems to work for now.

What the back is doing... I'm not really sure.  But I am seeing cowlicks in the front emerging, and feel a few more back on the crown.  The color looks some days like the salt will prevail, but other days the pepper is definitely still holding strong.  And there's a chance that it's starting to get just long enough to find its curl again.

As I was musing over this new thing called my hair the other day, it occurred to me that no matter what I do, I can't make the process go any faster.  It is evolving in exactly the way it wants to evolve, and there's no way to think it out ahead of time.  Will I wear it short, or long, or brushed back?  Will I color it or will the gray turn into a cool bad ass silver that I'll strut with bravado?  Will I try to work with the cowlicks or just let them get covered up by long hair again?  Where are we going with all this?  It is absolutely impossible to tell. Impossible to speed up.  Impossible to pre-plan.

And I found some solace in that.  Obviously I'm thinking a lot these days of what I want to do with my life going forward.  I want to know, now, immediately, what I should do about everything from here on out.  But... that's impossible.  Just like my hair, I may have to just wait and watch and feel into the situations as they grow into their fullness.  I may not know what the right thing to do is until my life evolves into to just the right place of knowingness.  A cowlick may appear that I will want to work around, or accentuate, or play with.  Something else may happen that I didn't foresee and I will want to explore that for awhile.

Just as time can't be saved and dribbles through the fingers of my life at a steady, maddening, inexorable pace... it also can't be hurried up.  As much as I want to save the good moments and hurry through the bad... it all goes by steadily.  I can't hold it, and I can't stop it, and I certainly don't want to kill it.  But I can watch what it unfolds, and play with the new opportunities as they present themselves.