I like to think that reading people is not an easy task. Sure, you can read between the lines, facial expressions and body language, but you can never get the perfect answer. The truth is, we are only brutally honest with ourselves, and even then we lie. I have to admit, there are several days when I wake up wishing I could hide in
bed forever, or maybe dye my hair blonde and walk out of the house feeling like someone else. I only tried that once, and let’s just say blonde hair doesn’t suit me at all. Since then, whenever I feel I need a sudden change of identity, whenever I want to mark the end of an era, I chop my hair off. Easy, relatively cheap, and I always
know that regardless of what happens, it will ALWAYS grow back. Now I wonder if a guy ever has that feeling, and if they do, would they get a haircut? Would they grow a beard? A mustache?
A mustache takes time to grow. You have to consistently trim it, reshape it, style it. So how does one decide to get a mustache? Is it to culminate an existential quest for masculinity? Or perhaps it’s a desire to look more intellectual, fit in with the hipsters. Or maybe it’s the same adolescent angst that plagues our minds from time to time that drives men to change their look for a while.
The problem is, when I’ve tried to change my look to change my mood, it rarely works. The outside can swiftly change but the inside remains the same. So whether it’s a mustache, a wig, a new hairdo, or a new pair of shoes, we have to remember that that doesn’t change who we are. That’s why reading people is hard: we can mask the exterior, disguise it, decorate it. It’s the interior that’s a constantly evolving enigma that we figure out as we go. And sometimes, only sometimes, we meet people who can solve the riddle before we do, who know when we are lying to ourselves and who can see right through.