"The only beard better than a full grey beard is a half beard."

My mother was taking a sip from her drink when she coughed again. I wasn’t sure if it was because of what I said, or what we were watching.

It was a dumb movie by all accounts. Some guy went for a pilgrimage, leaving his new wife in the care of his best friend. Of course, his friend wanted to care for her a little too much, against her will, a scenario that's often thoroughfare for locally produced films. Shenanigans occurred, bad stuff happened, etcetera etcetera. 

I could be doing a million other more productive things with my time, but whatever. Laughing at the movie was essentially quality time with Mom, and I don’t get time to do that enough with school and everything in the way.

“What do you mean?”

I don’t know, I said, handing her a tissue. I truly didn’t know, to be honest. It was a thought that just popped into my head. But I felt I could do something with it. It seemed to have an odd, hidden wisdom about it. 

So I wrote the opening line on MS Word, and glanced at it from time to time. Then it came to me. Seconds before the Sandman came to me, I began to muse…

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Let’s say there’s a kid.

You’re sitting in the park, relaxing on a park bench. You’re watching him, thinking about how you are/were like him. He’s playing, having a blast doing kid stuff. Then he sees a beehive, sitting high up in the tree.

Now, he’s curious about the beehive. He’s never seen one before in his life, doesn’t even know what he’s looking at (he doesn’t pay much attention in class). So he looks around, and sees an ally in you. He goes over to you and says,

“Hey, wanna help me get that down from up there?”

Now I think there are about 2 options of how to answer him. And they all hinge on the quality of your beard.

Full Grey Beard

A little too extra, but sure, this works

Here, you’re an old man. Wise old fella who's seen many a moon. "Beehives??", you think to yourself, mentally shaking your fist at him. Why isn’t he thinking about settling down? Becoming a doctor? When you were his age, you had your whole life figured out, from childhood all the way to this particular moment where you had to impart some knowledge on a young whippersnapper trying to hurt himself. 

So you go ahead, and calmly (yeah right) reprimand him for snapping his whipper (what in God’s name does that thing mean?) Then you send him on his way. Crisis averted; another young man on the path of fulfillment. Then you fall asleep, because…well because you’re an old man. 

You wake up to the cries of an injured whippersnapper, who did the thing once you were no longer in his way. 

Half Grey Beard

Stock photos be doing the most

Now, you're not exactly young, but you're in no way old. You understand this is an idiotic idea. But you can’t help but see yourself in this dumb little kid. You can imagine your devastation if you were him and declined his offer, but you also understand his parents’ devastation when they realize their insurance doesn’t cover “some dumb kid shit”.

Ergo, you figure out some reasonable middle ground; maybe educate him about bees, but still let him throw a rock at the hive from a safe distance, so he sees them in action.

The result? Everyone’s happy. Including the Bees’ Police Chief, who doesn’t have to fill out paperwork explaining how half the force is all of a sudden now dead. 

Such a happening would have been un-BEE-coming of the Chief

Here’s the thing; 

It’s obviously not great to be an idiot, but sometimes it’s not exactly great to be too wise. 

Whoever you choose to seek advice from, has to have some nearby degree of knowledge about the subject. Someone who can understand your point of view. Don’t ask your parents about college, maybe ask a friend who just graduated and is fresh into the job market. 

Don’t just ask someone who has experienced it, but someone who just got done with that experience.

All of my mom’s school advice essentially boiled down to “STUDY!!!; but from time to time, she still lets it slip how many parties she went to when she was my age. 

It's not hypocrisy, it's just them trying to look out for you.

The thing is, the GreyBeards have experienced the good and the bad, so they’re trying to filter out the bullshit and give you exactly what you need. Sometimes though, they forget that the reason they learnt and stuck with the important stuff was because they trudged through all that bullshit in the first place. I guess that's the thing:

WE NEED THAT BULLSHIT

So find a HalfBeard. A good HalfBeard that’ll show you all the bullshit but still help you navigate through it. You come out the other side smelling a little funky, but ultimately the better for it,  as opposed to being squeaky clean and uninformed about the basal struggles of life.

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Image Courtesy: Pixabay