Once in a while —and by that I mean very frequently–– someone will ask me, "Did you cut your hair?" To this, I will inevitably answer no... only to have them say, "you definitely cut your hair." My immediate, and unwise, instinct is to pop that ignoramus a smack in the face. This is followed by a rationalization of all the reasons it would not be wrong to bus’ that person a hard slap. That process looks a little bit like this: "but they’re foolish," "they’re just trying to make me maaaad," "ooooh, one smack from me and I bet they’d never do it again. Actually, they might not ever do anything again... I hit hard 😈." However, as a pacifist and as a person who would do very poorly in jail, that is not how Kathlyn does her do. In most of these instances, I drop the topic.

If you know me, you know that I am sensitive about my hair in the same way that some people are sensitive about their weight, or their acne, or anything else that they have little control over, like.... the state of their country. When badgered about the thing over which you have no control that you’ve worked so hard to present in the best possible light, it feels AWFUL. Here is this flaw, this blemish, this bug in your software that you’ve tried so hard to cover up, only to have some random imbecile loudly and discourteously announce it to the world.

To anyone who feels that way... I completely understand. Here are a couple of lessons that I have used to manage my feelings on issues of this kind... and believe it or not I learned them for my less than perfect hair!

Lesson 1: Charity

Recently, I’ve been reading the book "The Coddling of the American Mind" which is, by the way, a great read. This book outlines The American Generation Z’s (born 1995-2015) unhealthy and maladaptive thinking processes and explores ways to fix them. One of the healthy thinking patterns that is encouraged is charity, which is to say, give someone the benefit of the doubt in a conflict by assuming that they are not trying to offend you.
I know you're not going to want to hear this but, believe me, it’s good for you to be charitable to someone who has accidentally hurt your feelings. It’s healthy for you because you don’t spend so much energy being mad, and it’s healthy for them because you can constructively teach them that they made a mistake. Not only is this a much more productive way of solving your problems, but it also makes you feel better.

I’ve found this new way of thinking so helpful that I’ve made it my new year’s resolution. So far it’s kept me from snapping on someone ignorant and it’s helped me through many an argument. It has meant recognising that the people asking about my hair are not being malicious or cruel, they’re just being curious. When I remember that they’re not trying to hurt me, it gets a lot easier to peaceably go about my day.

Lesson 2: Perspective
My favourite YouTube channel is the vlogbrothers. They are two middle-aged men who make video letters to each other weekly. As strange as it sounds, they’ve built up quite a following because their videos are educational, informative, creative, inclusive, and generally nerdy. For a nerd like myself, the community that has formed around this strange body of work —nerdfighteria— has been a home away from home, and a place to let my brain roam on a bad school day.

John Green, the older brother and author of The Fault in our Stars, has quite serious OCD. He gets very easily wrapped up in the stresses of everyday life in the 21st century: social media, the news, world hunger, poverty and politics. For him, it all gets overwhelming and occasionally sends him into what he calls "a thought spiral." If you’ve never been in a thought spiral, lucky you. They’re terrible. They’re characterized by a lack of control over what you’re thinking and diving deeper and deeper into negative feelings and thoughts about yourself and the world around you. Yes, they suck.

But... do you know what helps? Perspective. This video by John explains how even though things might feel bad right now, they’ve really gotten better: https://youtu.be/eq6Z8OG7F_Q. As the video says, human life is getting better, faster than ever before. The rate of child mortality has dropped drastically, and even though the world may feel like it’s a mess right now, for the poorest people —and therefore for the rest of us— the world has gotten better. And we need to keep working hard so that it will continue to get better.

This perspective required the Gateses and John to zoom out from their problem by 20 years or so. For me, it has required a zoom out of 2. I cut my hair 4 years ago, and for a couple of years... it didn’t really grow. However, now it has.

My hair two years ago was here



Now it’s here.



I have that much extra hair! That’s a lot of extra hair! Additionally, the hair at the front of my head is now actually hair and not over glorified untameable edges. It falls down and it does hair things... and I think it like looks pretty great 🤷🏾‍♀️.

It doesn’t grow very fast, but it grows well. Hank Green says that "good things happen slowly, and bad things happen all at once." The bad things happening all at once make it really difficult to recognize and celebrate progress. But there has been real progress, and if we keep working hard there will be more.

For me, that means continuing to take really good care of my hair. For you, it might mean continuing to eat well and not giving up on your diet, or soldiering on through an extra hour of DP homework, or running the extra mile, literally. Small scale progress may seem underwhelming, but creating good and sustained habits will reap real and palpable progress that you can be proud of.