Gray Hair and the Compass

My hair turned gray on December 31, a few hours before the calendar flipped to 2015.  Or maybe it happened just yesterday, when I double-checked in the mirror after looking at New Years pictures (pictures surely can lie - it’s the lighting).  Yep.  Right there.  Gray.

Although gray hair has been on the rise, the gray-to-natural ratio seemed stable for quite a long while, lopsided in favor of natural pigment. Now the tables have turned: more gray than not.

This is normal and expected, is it not? After all, gray hair represents the mythic crown of wisdom referred to by seers and visionaries.  It is also evidence (no surprise) that I am mortal.  An epic wake-up call to live, to finally agree that life is a mystery and wonder is our calling.

It seems at this stage of the game life is also often about compassion – for others, but also for self.  It is about other classic things like dignity, and courage, and goodness, too.  Oh and honesty. Things that were often swept under the rug back before the gray hair showed up, back when spinning multiple plates in the air seemed to overshadow contemplation.

To take this a step further, I keep glancing over my shoulder today, sensing someone is about to sneak up and surprise me.  You know, a stalker. And yet I haven’t caught anything close to a glimpse in hours, so I guess it’s all in my head.

Either that, or else I subliminally expect my personal compass to show up, the one that points true north.  It has a way of directing me back to intuition (a sixth sense), confident humility (this is not really an oxymoron if you let it sink in), simplicity (whatever is clear and accessible), insight (deep understanding), and caring (this points back to compassion again).  All things that add up to survival.  And beyond that, to living well.

Stalker or no, I’m walking through my day open to the influence of that invisible compass, trying to be fully present.  I retreat back inside after shoveling snow, and slick down unruly gray strands (why is gray hair like wire compared to normal hair?) with a sort of awe over the fact that I’m alive and have lived long enough to be graced with the gift of wiry gray hair. 

There’s a sort of desperateness involved in all of this though, a longing for courage and stamina and kindness to prevail, even as suffering does its remedial work of calling true north back into the picture.  Even while cracks in the walls widen, and old photos fall cockeyed in their frames to show more blank space than image.

It’s a matter of filling up, I tell myself.  Filling up those inevitable empty places.  Being a giver of what I’ve been given.  Then my hair can turn gray, and I won’t even notice or care.