Growing the Beard

Being the absolutely amazing guy that I am, this year I have decided to give a gift to you, my readers. For the next twelve days, I will be providing you with a new piece of writing each day. Some will be lighthearted in scope and delivery, while others will be more serious in nature.

One of my favorite non-social networking websites is TVTropes.org. It’s a fun compilation of common themes found in not only television but also in other forms of entertainment. It gives a detailed description of the trope then provides multiple examples of that trope. Today, one particular trope, “Growing the Beard”, caught my attention.

Named for the marked improvement in quality of Star Trek: The Next Generation after Commander Riker grew a beard, the site defines Growing the Beard as “…the definitive moment when a television show becomes better in quality.” Many (if not most) good television shows have one of these moments, the defining eureka where everything finally clicks.

I thought about this trope and if it applies to people in unscripted life, and I immediately concluded that it does. I decided to delve a little deeper in that train of thought and figure out my “Growing the Beard” moment. What surprised me is that I have had a number of these moments in my life, defining moments that brought me into a successful chapter of my life.

The first “Growing the Beard” moment I had occurred in two parts over a span of five months from late 2002 to early 2003. After I started “Inside the Mind of Jakob Duehr”, I began to come into my own in terms of figuring myself out, but I hadn’t quite put all the pieces together. That happened in March 2003 when I decided to leave Palos Bible Church and return to Stone. I covered that in detail in my apologia, so I will not rehash that here. Those two decisions affected my life in a drastic way.

The next “Growing the Beard” moment occurred over the summer of 2008. When I finally decided to take control over my physical well-being, everything turned around. I felt better, I certainly looked better, and I gained the confidence that had been never been part of my repertoire. It helped me immeasurably during my student teaching, and it brought me into one of the happiest periods of my life.

The final “Growing the Beard” moment, incidentally, occurred when I shaved my beard in July 2011. I was just getting started in my job at Huntington, and I was still pretty beaten down mentally and emotionally from two years of bitter pills. When I shaved the beard and into the facial hair I currently have (and had wanted to grow for many years), I realized that facially I looked like the person I always wanted to be. It restored a very minute amount of my confidence. I then started to act the way I always wanted to act. I became a harder worker. I complained less. I even lost all the weight I had regained and have gotten into the best shape of my life.

I am not delusional enough to believe that my facial hair has a Samson-esque effect on my life and that shaving it would hasten my personal destruction. What I will say is that life has its ebbs and flows, and it is foolish to believe that things can never turn around. Sometimes all it takes is a little something. It could be as easy as growing a beard.