The manly act of growing a beard has a remarkable influence on those around you. I am amazed at the response given as they react to the report of a one month bearded sprint; let alone a full blown six month beardathon. There are generally three types of people, the highly supportive and excited type, the stoic yet deep inside envious type, and my favorite, the reactively offended type.
I appreciate the first two types and will stroke my beard in approval. The third type is truly fascinating; the beard brings out the worst in them. This particularly vociferous group has discouraged generations from bearded glory. Those who are seemingly the meekest, humblest, and most caring people around can be quite insulting (to their credit I don’t believe it’s intentional) to the idea of a beard. A common question is to understand ‘why would anyone grow such a hideous thing?’
I must reply to this question of why. For those who have grown a beard the immediate response is why not? The rationale is obvious for us, not only is the beard downright handsome and practical, there is a much deeper meaning. The quest of the beard is a passionate journey of self exploration. It is a pilgrimage that every man should strive for.
What do I mean ‘a passionate journey of self exploration’? The beard provides a man with the opportunity to set himself apart from his environment, to place himself in a situation of man vs. beard. To elaborate, one becomes comfortable with his surroundings in life, you expect particular responses from people and they expect a particular response from you. I hate to admit it, but we all fall victim to societal conformity in some way or another as well. Now throw a beard into the mix. All of the sudden, even subconsciously, those particular responses you expect are skewed. Even more interesting is that the expectation from you has changed, and you receive more of a reaction as the perception of those you surround yourself with is violated. While this makes for an interesting sociological experiment, the result has a much deeper impact. Effectively, growing a beard places you in an unfamiliar wilderness, a mystical land where things are not as once perceived. Why would someone want to grow such a hideous thing? This ‘wilderness’ forces a man to be alone, to come up directly against himself, to enter into the realm of man vs. beard. This is where the ‘passionate journey of self exploration’ begins.
When a man enters this intimate, bearded dance, he undergoes a deep personal evaluation. Each day he looks in the mirror, his face has changed. The face is an important part of how the mind recognizes a person, as this gradual change takes place; the man begins to lose what he once thought a significantly defining part of self character. Now that his face has become irrelevant because his mind has recognized it as a transient, non stationary trait, how does a man define himself? This is the personal, deeply emotional force that drives a thorough search of self. When a man has lost himself, he is forced to find parts that are not easily lost again, characteristics that are invariant of time or surroundings. This journey has given man pleasure, pain, sorrow, and joy. It begins to become clear why someone would grow such a ‘hideous thing’.
Once a man has grown a beard, he greatly appreciates the self revelations that the beard facilitated and inspired. The beard is not a ‘hideous thing’, but a beautiful and magnificently misunderstood gift. Many men undergo a depression at the loss of a beard. His beard and him are no longer in a battle, man vs. beard, but instead, intimately joined as one. The respect of the beard developed through such a union, a great trek of discovery, lingers in the hearts of men everywhere for the remainder of their lives. This is why the obvious and immediate response to you naysayers is ‘Why wouldn’t you grow a beard’? You may not understand the driving force behind the Winter of the Beard, but hopefully you can respect the individuals’ worth as something deeper than their hair follicles, as some great and invariant gem of character found only from deep personal evaluation.
I will not upload a picture today, but instead weekly. My daily pictures will be created as a slide show at the end of the 6 months. Needless to say the journey continues…
