To Beard, Or Not To Beard
I can’t point to a specific moment, but sometime after I landed back in Miami from my summer trip to Costa Rica, the urge to shave my beard started creeping into my conscious mind.
For context: I first grew my beard as soon as I could manage a respectable one, around 18, maybe earlier. Back then, it was about looking older. I was working for my grandpa, dealing with customers who’d known me since I was barely a teenager. They didn’t dismiss me outright, but there was always that subtle infantilizing. The beard helped close that gap, especially as our client base expanded to new people who didn’t know me in the earlier years.
But the beard stuck, it became a part of who I was; through most of my adult life, the beard was a constant. Until my own personal tectonic plates shifted: divorce, leaving the family business to run my own company, the pandemic, a new relationship, and a newfound willingness to step beyond my comfort zone. Somewhere in that mix, over a year into the relationship and deep into pandemic life, I remembered my girlfriend once mentioning the beard irritated her skin when we kissed. That thought floated alongside a bunch more: a curiosity about how I’d look, the quiet anonymity of lockdown, the desire to try something different. Eventually, those factors stacked up, and the beard came off.
I stayed clean-shaven for the first time in over a decade, for around two years, in fact; until my daughter asked what I’d look like with it again. We’d been looking through old pictures and videos from when she was a baby and I guess it intrigued her. And so, the beard returned. Like an old friend who I’d forgotten how much I’d missed.
Fast-forward to last month. I trimmed before Costa Rica, figuring it’d grow just enough while I was away. It did. But instead of grooming it when I got back, I let it go. Watched it grow as I continued drifting deeper into a limbo I’d been sinking into since way before the trip. Condo for sale so I could move closer to my daughter’s school and cut down the soul-sucking commute I’d been enduring, but in a stagnant market, business decisions caught between “smart” and “soulful.”
Then it hit me: this was my version of women cutting bangs after a breakup. A small act of control in a world built on chaos. And just like that, the beard came off. Worst case, it’ll grow back in two weeks. Best case, it sparks a change when I needed it most and inspires others to come into my life.