Show Your Hair

I decided I wanted to become a badass, so I did.

I found it interesting that my daily passage from Mark Nepo yesterday was titled, Show Your Hair.  Here it is below.

Show Your Hair

My grandmother told me,

“Never hide your green hair.  They can see it anyway.”

-Angeles Arrien

From Mark Nepo, regarding that poem:

“From the agonies of kindergarten, when we first were teased or made fun of in the midst of all our innocence, we have all struggled in one way or another with hiding what is obvious to others.  No one plans this.  It is not a conspiracy, but rather an inevitable and hurtful passage from knowing only ourselves to knowing the world.  The tragedy is that many of us never talk about it, or never get told that our “green hair” is beautiful, or that we don’t need to hide, no matter what anyone says on the way to lunch.  And so, we often conclude that to know the world we must hide ourselves.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  It is an ancient, unspoken fact of being that blackmail is only possible if we believe that we have something to hide.  The inner corollary of this is that worthless feelings arise when we believe, however briefly, that who we are is not enough.”