Order of life

There is an expected order of life, like the oldest person usually dies first, the oldest child goes to school first, the youngest child grows up quickest, you know the sort of thing. We often don't think about the expected order of events, however as soon as this pattern is broken or something happens the wrong way round, we are stunned and often unable to accept the turn of events.

One event that I am sure none of you has given much time to think about is losing your hair. So the unspoken, undiscussed and highly likely expected order of events is as follows. From a male perspective, the granddad loses his hair first, then the dad as he gets older and never the children. From the female perspective, again maybe the grandfather, then the spouse and that's it. So what happens when the 30 something year old woman loses her hair first?? Now that is a change of the natural path, a little unusual and some would say freaky. Well that is what happened to me.

The first reaction, is “well that can't happen, that’s not how it works, that’s just wrong”.  Then over the next few years you manage to get over the shock of losing one of your defining assets and build in coping strategies, and after that you even enter into the playful stage of “oooohhh what type of wig suits me best, are blonde curls really possible?”  And then finally, the most liberating phase kicks in, the phase of acceptance.

So why is it that things happening in the wrong order are so hard to deal with.  Why is it that there is an order at all, where does that order come from? Are we so reliant on past patterns that we can’t deal with any alterations?

For me in the first instance of being dealt an incorrect order of life, was that my life seemingly falls apart, there are very few constants in life, few reliable events, but those few that are sure, we rely on, so when they change, our world view shifts, we begin to question everything and wonder what else can happen. The good news is that we learn the most out of hardship. It may not seem like it at the time (does the question - why me??? Sound familiar?) however if you look hard enough there is always some good to be found in any event. You just have to care enough to look and sometimes look real hard.

The good that I discovered was plenty. I started looking at my assets in different ways,  I discovered how lovely my eyes were, I understood for the first time that purple makeup makes my green eyes look beautiful, and I also saw that the colour of my clothes made a difference to my complexion and finally and very importantly I understood that my bum did not only look good in this new dress but GREAT.

It's a shame that I had to lose my hair to appreciate the gifts I had been given by mother nature, but that's how this stuff works isn't it.  So I as sign off, I encourage you all to spend 60 seconds thinking about something you have in your life, something that you have not yet spent time on appreciating in it's entirety, then acknowledge it and go tell somebody about it.  My tip for the day, don't wait for your hair to fall out!