For years I’ve been parting my hair on the wrong side of my head.  Jarring, I know.  I discovered this quite by accident yesterday.  It turns out my hair tends to grow towards one direction at the back of my head which happens to be the opposite direction to which I had worn a part (when I did where a part) since 1989.

This revelation came to me as I was using two mirrors to inspect the back of my hair prior to a self administered hair cut.  There I was propped up on a stool facing away from the vanity, holding a mirror in hand as I made tiny corrections to get just the right angle of the dark side of my head.  And to my great surprise there it was:  the hair on my crown  flowing together like grass in a river in one direction, quite opposite to the way I had been trying to train it.

So today was very exciting as I debuted my new part to the world and as you might expect, nobody cared.  I did notice, however, that the persistent alfalfa sprigs I wrestle with daily simply lay down and be quite.

This made me realize a couple of things.  First, there seems to be a natural flow to things; a rhythm; an arch; a grain.  When you try and work against this, it can feel like an uphill battle.  It’s usually more productive to work with this rhythm and use it to your advantage.  There are times, of course, when moving against the status quo is the best option, but it seems to be that in most cases you’ll catch more crabs working with the rhythm of the tides than against them.

Sometimes it takes a shift in perception to find this rhythm.  Twenty years of a misguided part and finally with a couple of mirrors I was able to see things literally from a different angle.

So the next time it feels like you’re pushing a big stone up a steep hill, look at it from a different angle and you might just see a way to roll that stone around that hill.