The New Haircut Theory of Euphoria
I walked into 325 Hudson Street this morning, newly tanned from the beach and sporting a new short summer haircut. New flip flops too. Felt pretty cool. Before stepping on the elevator, a friend/foosball teammate waiting by the door stopped me. "Woah, looks like someone had a good time at the beach!"
"Yeah, it was great, thanks," I confirmed through a smile, glancing down at my gingerbread arm. We reached the seventh floor, where the smiles and comments continued. Where did you go? How was it? You look so different! The change was apparently dramatic enough that one guy swore I was a new employee at first glance.
I'm guessing that this has probably happened to you before too. You make a semi-dramatic change - a haircut, piercing, clean shave, new glasses, liposuction, whatever - and for those first few moments when you reveal yourself to the world, everything just falls into place. Your friends make corny jokes and you make corny responses (but everyone laughs anyway), and people who barely say a word to you are now freakin' Shakespearian.
I'm not gonna lie...I love that feeling. Not as much because of the public attention, but rather the inherent confidence and happiness that goes along with such a change. I love having that sense of a fresh start and an optimistic outlook; it's something only a week of building sand castles can give you. So that's the second in official Okay Samurai Theories (as opposed to all those unofficial ones), right behind the Warp Pipe Theory of Interactivity. The New Haircut Theory of Euphoria.
I tend to go for months between haircuts. Partly to cut back on monthly costs, and partly because it's one errand that can easily be delayed (unlike say, restocking on toilet paper). I don't particularly like having long hair. It starts to curl and go wild in the New York humidity, and pretty soon there's a Justin Timberlake Bye Bye Bye-era fro thing going on, except without the bleached roots and overly-suggestive backstage glances from Lance. Yet, at the same time, it's almost always worth those few extra weeks of uncontrollable fro to abruptly get it hacked down to nearly nothing. Going from shaggy frat boy to military recruit in about fifteen bucks somehow seems worth the wait.
There are these single iconic images of people I know tucked away somewhere in my imagination, and I immediately associate with those images upon thinking about people. Malcolm Gladwell writes a little bit about this in Blink; talking about a part of our brain - the fusiform gyrus - that helps to distinguish details between the thousands of faces we know. I say the name Marilyn Monroe, and you create a specific image of her in your mind. When something dramatic appears and threatens to change that imaginary image, we can't help but be interested and soak the new information in.
If I were trying too hard to somehow mold or establish that one iconic image of myself in people's minds, I'd do something like wear a pair of obligatorily thick-rimmed art director glasses (except with neon green frames), have my Washington Nationals baseball hat cocked exclusively at a 3/4 angle, and drink only banana soy milkshakes. Actually, I've instead tried to shape my personal iconic image into the cartoon version of Dave, who you've maybe seen sitting under a tree or drawing at his desk around here before. I like that little guy.
These infrequent haircuts give me a handful of chances each year to have that fresh start feeling, and it has now become somewhat of a habit. Coupled with the tan and new flip flops, I guess the effects just became that much clearer today. The New Haircut Theory of Euphoria states that visual changes in our everyday lives - from the obscure to the dramatic - are good things, and prevent us from becoming predictable and boring like Dr. Phil. Sure, it's mostly on the subconscious level, and the initial reactions will fade away quickly (or maybe they don't, according to Gladwell), but those few instances of last-day-of-school-esque euphoria are absolutely worth it.
Monday, August 21 at 8:50 PM
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