This morning I had a irrational moment. You know what I'm talking about: one of those moments where you say to yourself, "did I really just think that?" I was getting dressed and I wanted to wear one particular hat with the outfit that I was wearing. It matched perfectly. The only problem was that had wore that same hat the day before! Gasp, I thought. What will people think!?!? The same hat two days in a row?!?! A little background for those of you who don't know me personally...
When I first started in the work place, my job was to do presentations at high schools. At that time I still had a very youthful look about me and since I moved from school to school, the school security would often mistake me for a student wandering the halls. To try to remedy that, I would always dress in a suit to distinguish myself from the kids. Around that same time, my fraternity chapter decide to shave their head in tribute to the Nuba tribe in Africa. After reading a book about them, we felt a certain connection with them across the ocean, backwards across the Middle Passage. So we shaved our heads. Here's the thing about hair; it protects your head! When you remove it you need to replace that protection with something and, most of the time, that comes in the form of a hat. But when you wear suits to work, you can't wear a baseball cap (or at least back then you couldn't). I bought a fedora and started wearing that. On a service project in Bloomington, Indiana one year, I picked up a black short brim from a thrift store, very Bear Bryant. That became my 'hat'. I had one and I became known as the guy in the suit and the hat because back then, I was the only young man wearing fedoras regularly in my circles. Slowly, fedoras became more and more popular and I purchased another hat. And another. And another. Pretty soon it got to the point where I am now where I never wear the same hat two days in a row. Fast forward to this morning.
That moment made me think about two lessons. Firstly, how often do we stop ourselves from doing things because we think that people will judge us for our actions when the reality is that people don't really care about that thing...or even better, they aren't even really pay attention to what we do anyway! I had to stop and remind myself that NO-ONE cares that I wear the same hat two days in a row except for the man staring back at me in the mirror. But was all do this: we all have those moments when we think that we're under FAR more scrutiny that we actually are and we let it stymie us. What could we accomplish if we did not care what people thought about our deeds? I bet Steve Jobs could answer that.
Secondly, it made me realize just how complicated we make our own lives. I used to have ONE hat. Black suit? Black hat. Blue suit? Same hat. Grey suit? Same hat. Brown suit? You guessed it: Same hat! There was no back and forth about matching. I grabbed my hat and started my day. Simple. Sometimes we need to get back to simple. In this society where many of us have sooooo many choices for EVERYTHING, we get caught up with the variety and lose precious moments of life living. Whereas my delima cost me all of 5-10 minutes of my day today, how many hours and days do we labor over other more substantial choices when they will all give us comparable satisfaction, losing precious time in the deliberation process. My fraternity Brother Gladston lives by the K.I.S.S. philosophy: Keep It Simple, Stupid. As a result, he is decisive and gets right to task at hand (which sometimes is cleaning out my refrigerator). I like that. We analyze things to death. Some of us just need to act. Really.
Well, who knew choosing a hat would make me want to write a lengthy blog (yeah ....sorry about all the words and stuff). And in case you're wondering, I am wearing that hat that I wore yesterday. Just call me Honey Badger today: I don't care!!
These are my thoughts...what are yours?
