I can’t fully remember the first time I became aware of the gray hairs on the back of my head. A few years ago I think my mom was brushing through my hair and we just laughed about it. She even showed my grandma once and they both admired it because it was only a couple.
It wasn’t until about six months ago after coming back home from some traveling that I realized I had quite a few more gray hairs than just one or two. I had several, concentrated on one spot in my head. The grays will spread sooner than later, and time does not care that I intended on enjoying my natural color for a lot longer.
When it really sunk in that I was graying early, I worried and cried for several hours. It was a really sad reminder of my inevitable fate and how temporary we are as humans. I’ve always thought about aging but it never felt real. Despite this, seeing how temporary things are in life, including myself, allowed me to question my mindset towards life. It made me wonder whether or not I am living life to its fullest potential and taking advantage of what I have now. I learned that I need to schedule out times in my day to bring myself back to the present moment and not get too carried away with school, other commitments, social media, etc.
There’s this quote by a Stoic philosopher named Marcus Aurelius. He says, “You could leave life right now, let that determine what you do, say, and think”. I thought this was a good reminder that the future isn’t guaranteed and it’s useless to waste time on things that add no value to my life. Our time is limited here and I want to make the most of it.
I never fully appreciated my natural color when I was younger, but the idea that I will eventually no longer have it makes me appreciate it a lot more these days. The same can be said about life. We don’t appreciate it fully when we don’t accept its inevitable end and that’s what makes the present moment so valuable.
I’ve learned that early graying is much more common than we think, and is often genetic or due to stress. Stress is often unavoidable but can be a large factor in early graying as is our genetics. Most women will have to go through this at some point in time and it can be a very beautiful thing depending on which way you decide to view it. I looked at my situation in hindsight and reminded myself that it’s not my looks that I’ll regret not having when I’m old, it’s the experiences that I never made and the things I never wrote or said.