How Face-Fur Failure Gave Me An Epiphany

My body has failed me over the last week, and I have failed my body.

The first example that comes to mind is its pitiful attempt at a beard.

Meandering around campus day in day out, I couldn’t help but notice that beards are apparently all the rage. From subtle five-o’clock-shadow to outright “A GREAT BIG BUSHY BEARD”s, simple male logic was screaming at me that to get all the ladies, I just needed to let nature do its thing on my chin. So I listened to my simple male logic, and unsurprisingly it let me down.

Admittedly, the reason I first embarked on my journey to beardhood was simply because I was too lazy to shave. But I decided, as I looked into the mirror one morning, razor held aloft, that I’d spare my face and give it a go. What’s the worst that could happen?

It started off pretty well. Early on, a mature shade of growth appeared obediently across my face. I glowed with pride.

As time went on, I embraced my new face-fur. I walked past people thinking I bet they think I’m a loveable rogue or Restrain yourselves, ladies. (Actually, I’ve never thought that in my life, but the point is I felt pretty happy with it.)

Then, all hell broke loose…

Spurts of wiry strands everywhere. Uneven contagions of murky growth. And had some patches of hair actually retreated back into my face!? It was chaos. My face looking like a hedge that had been trimmed by a furious ape with a blender.

I attempted some damage control. Grabbed a razor and shaving foam, lathered my face, hacked away until some semblance of my former pride returned.

Shaken but undeterred, I headed to a party that night with colleagues from my part-time job. It was a great night, and our tongues loosened by satisfaction and all the… juice we’d been drinking, one of my female friends touched my beard and said: “Aww, your wee beard.”

This is it! I thought. I’ve done it! I’m a successful bearer of the beard – a king of the five o’clock shadow! I’ve… Wait.

There was something in her tone. I could tell it. She hadn’t said “Aww, your wee beard” in an admiring or impressed way. More in the way you’d say it to a three-year-old who’d smeared their face with marker pen.

“Do you… like it?” I asked tentatively.

I received an vaguely pitying and terrifying smile in response.

The next morning, I shaved.

A second example of my body’s laughable attempts at success and efficiency involves sleep deprivation.

Following the aforementioned party, I stayed up far later than I normally would. By the time I slumped into bed that night, it was barely even that night any more.

Nonetheless, I got a decent-ish sleep and woke up feeling relatively capable of normal life. It was a struggle, but I managed to study a bit:

I toiled through some ironing:

I even went for a run, and as far as I know only plunged face-first into the ground once or twice:

Either way, I was looking forward to a good night’s sleep when darkness fell. With the day done, I got myself washed, changed, and got into bed. I felt the softness of the pillow, the comforting embrace of the sheets.

I closed my eyes.

I opened them.

I closed them again.

I kept them closed.

I opened them.

I stared at the ceiling.

I stared at the ceiling for three hours.

I like to imagine my brain and body were having an argument throughout all of this.

Body: Phew! What a day. Time for some rest, eh, brain, you old ragamuffin you.

Brain: No.

Body: Erm… no?

Brain: No. Stuff do.

Body: What stuff? Brain, we need sleep.

Brain: No sleep. Stuff. We do stuff.

Body: We’ve been doing stuff all day! AND all of last night! We need rest!

Brain: NO REST! Brain like work til sun-up. Brain like!

Body: Braaaaain. I’m warning you…

Brain: IT 3:30am! BRAIN HAPPY AND EXCITED! BRAIN LIKE SUN-UP! BRAIN YELL FOR LOTS MORE HOURS!

Body: God DAMN you, brain! I’ll come up there! I’LL DO IT!

And on and on and on.

Either way, Brain won over for most of the night before Body managed to smother the wrinkly wee gremlin. Late on, I decided I may as well make the most of my time and wrote for a while in bed, which was actually pretty pleasant apart from the skull-splitting pain and the pull of gravity on my eyelids increasing exponentially.

I suppose the purpose of this passage is to illustrate our irrationality and rationality, whether deliberate or not. Our ability to ignore logic and do stupid things (e.g. grow ill-fated beards), which we then sort out in fits of productivity or pragmatism (e.g. Shave the bloody thing off after learning from the experience. Or making do when you can’t sleep and doing something that sets you at ease.) is very human. And I'm pretty proud of that shared trait to be honest.

We say short-sighted things. We lose our temper. We get defensive when we know we're in the wrong.

We waste our time. Or we spend too much time on something we shouldn't. We get involved when we don't need to. We fight when we should run, or vice versa.

We trust people we shouldn't. We let ourselves get hurt.

And through much (but not all) of this we can find a little voice in the back of our head saying "Whoooow there! Tread carefully, good sir, this is my body too." But we go on anyway.

Yet maybe this doesn't matter. Come to think of it, a world where we don't do anything wrong or questionable would, within reason, be pretty flippin' boring. And stagnant. If a few pioneering scientists or explorers in the past hadn't blown themselves up or eaten something that should really stay in the ground, we wouldn't be where we are today. We learn from deliberate, tactical stupidity. And we grow stronger from picking up the pieces afterwards.

(Apart from those scientists I mentioned earlier. In that particular case, they usually ended up being the pieces needing picked up. But we still learned from it!)

Basically, we can be pretty stupid. May as well embrace that: it gives us funny stories and things to think about. But when we get our act together, we can get our act together pretty darn well.