Another Day, Another Gray

Last night as I took down my hair one hair-tie at a time, I noticed a shining hair among all others, another gray.  It's been a few months now since I spotted my first one and I supposed that now because I'm thirty-one, this is going to become a common occurrence.  How did I become over thirty all of a sudden!?  It seems like only yesterday I packed my bags and moved across the Atlantic!  Feeling like age is catching up with me has been a couple of years in the making, and the odd gray hair is my six-month alarm, waking me up to the reality that time is ticking.

It seems so trivial that I should even be bothered by a number.  Not the number of gray hairs but my age.   However, the number explains why my body doesn't lose weight the same way it used to regardless of exercise, it explains the small ever-increasing lines around my eyes, and it explains why I am beginning to get gray hair.  I've known many with pre-mature gray, but their shining silvery locks don't bother them one bit.

Perhaps it is understanding and accepting the inevitable: that people get older, grayer, and more wrinkly.  Perhaps my slight anxiety stems from the reality that maybe I'm not doing what I need to do in the time I have to do it.  Maybe it's a fear that somehow I will become mediocre and colorless in this colorful world.  Maybe it's a fear that although I am not at a parenting stage in my life, I will wait until it's too late.  Maybe my biggest fear is "growing up" and looking back with the comment, "I wish I had done that".

Life for me is doing what I love to do, not wasting it on trivial bullshit.  I think that's why I a dabble in just about every craft, I have tried many different sports, and I seem to leap from task to task often without completing them.  Putting my fingers in every pie is how I feel connected and fulfilled.  It keeps me away from regret.

I know hair dye is possible, but over the past year I've been getting away from coloring my hair.  It's too expensive and it's been fun to be natural for the first time since middle school.  Yes, I said middle school.  Right now, I suppose I am focusing on trivial bullshit, gray hair.  It's not about the number or what color my hair is, it's how I feel and live.  I feel great and life is great!  What more is there to ponder? At least until six-months from now.