If you pay any attention to my blog, you’ll know that a few weeks ago I underwent an extremely traumatic experience.  I went in to Great Clips for a haircut and…

and…

This is really difficult. I’m sorry…

The dude cut off my beard.

He cut it right off.

Before he even went for the hair on my head, he slapped his razor up to the side of my face and pulled it all the way up from my jaw to the tip top of my cranium.

I was so appalled that I could hardly speak. I just let him finish and got out of there as quickly as I could.

After many soul searching montages including long walks on the beach, looking at pictures of my beard and I, and quite a few glasses of whiskey, I finally came around to accepting it: I was beardless. I knew people were staring and laughing behind my back, but I had to take it. I was seeing the world through new eyes, and I had to put up with it. I was a beardless man, and I had to make the best of it.

Well, ladies and gentlemen… (Watch the video below and read the next sentence at the :07 mark.)

THE BEARD IS BACK.

I knew it would be. I knew it couldn’t resist. It’s only been three weeks, though. It’s not as magnificent as it was when I walked in those Great Clips doors on that fateful Tuesday afternoon, but it’s certainly getting there. It feels so good to be me again- to feel the wind whipping at my beard, to have rogue mustache hairs poke up and tickle my nose, and to have my face feel just a little bit warmer.

But as I said, I feel a little bit more humble now. I understand what it’s like to be on the other side. I’d grown so comfortable in my bearded state that I forgot what it was to be human – a normal, beardless human.

And with that, I will let my beard continue to grow, but I will be more accepting of those beardless around me. It was an experience I’d never wish to go through again, but I learned so much. I learned to be more understanding, more caring. For I, too, was once like them. I, too, was beardless.

But no longer.

The beard is back.