The Haircut

So yesterday I got my hair cut.

It looks awesome.  It makes me look like Katie Holmes.  It’s slick, edgy, modern and timely, and I look totally hot with it.

I thought I’d get my hair cut before I went to Norway, so I would be able to prance around Europe with wonderful new hair and not have to worry about finding some dodgy hairdresser to hack my hair when it got too long.  The only issue is, as I was catching the train home with my new hot bob, and my luxurious bag and my ultra cool skirt, I realised that I am one of them.

Not “turning into” or “I resemble”.  I am.

Them.  Those well-educated, well brought up, classy women who grew up on the North Shore or the Eastern suburbs and supported through uni and travel by their daddies.  Who read intelligent novels by Kiran Desai and go to literary festivals on the author’s shout.  Them who have conversations about politics with their lawyer friends and art with their property agent.  Who would not bat an eye at paying for a taxi, or spending a few hundred dollars on a nice bag.  Who get their hair cut at expensive places, who know what fig with marscapone tastes like. 

I have become one of them.

Perhaps I was always one of them and was never able to see it.  And you know what, that concept really distresses me.

I think I’ve always known that I was privileged.  That not every kid has parents who drive expensive cars, and who wouldn’t think twice about sending them to private schools.  But at the same time I always knew that I was different.  That other kids’ parents didn’t go ballistic over a few dollars left over from the movies.  That most parents didn’t scream and shout when they brought home a boy from a different background.  That most parents wouldn’t point blank not encourage their child when she expressed the desire to pursue a creative path.  There are of course parents who combinations of all of the above, but it’s rare to find parents who encompass all of the above.  And it makes me different but not different enough in a way that makes me unique.  In fact, all this Gen Y postulating makes me, well, average.

It’s a whole generation that thinks like this, that knows that they can do whatever they want, whenever they want, and they can expect their parents to fund most of it.  This generation, Gen Y, are very aware of ourselves and our little crises that are awfully self-reflective and narcissitic.  The fact that I know that I am part of this generation makes me cringe, but in very fact is part of my averageness - to be aware of my self-awaredness makes me average Gen Y.  And that kind of sucks.

I’m not saying that I think I am destined for something great.  I mean, I do hope to achieve something beautiful and thrilling one day, something that contributes meaningfully to the world.  I think a lot of people want that.  A lot of people (hey, there’s all of Hollywood and most of Newtown) believe they are going to be the next Coldplay.  And a lot of people don’t.  I am happy to admit that I would love to be the next Cate Blanchett, but I also know that my talents are limited and can only go so far.  I just would like to believe that I am capable of contributing something meaningful to this world, whether it be through acting work or my personal writings and journals.  I don’t need to be remembered.  I don’t need to be on TV or in the movies or have a documentary made about me.  In fact, I’d rather that didn’t happen.  I just want to know that I have created something beautiful, and that something will live on and inspire joy in more people, whether in this life time or the next.  I don’t need to live on till eternity.  After all, it’s all going to end some day, and then no-one will remember anything.

And so although I was brought up to be both privileged and screwed up, I kind of hope my resultant averageness will inspire something greater.  That there is meaning to my privilege, that there is some sort of struggle.  Because it would devastate me if at the end of the day I realised I was just like everyone else.

At uni, I am most definitely different.  No-one else wants to be a doctor and an actor.  Outside of med I meet all these aspiring something or others who definitely don’t have medicine to back them up.  In fact, it is my medicine which makes me unique in a world of actors who are essentially like each other, and my acting which makes me different from doctors who are essentially like each other.  Yet these qualities don’t necessarily make me a good doctor or a good actor, or even a good person.  And in the end, despite my desire to be different, when I meet someone who is like me, who does have their passions split, I realise in the end I’m just like them and nothing different.  Even when I try to be unique I am the same.

I think that was the reason I got so enamoured with R at the beginning of the year.  That for a while I thought I would like to be part of one thing, and one thing only.  That to be involved in the elite world of money-focussed medicine I would be able to be part of yacht racing on Saturdays, of big houses on the North Shore, gentlemen with manners and children with nannies.  But I quickly realised that this was not what I wanted, that becoming a North Shore wife was not going to lead me to enlightenment, more like boredom because I wasn’t doing anything.  And so I regressed into my usual state of split confusion.

But at the end of the day, whether I am like anybody else or not like anybody else is not really part of the equation.  Being able to afford nice things doesn’t necessarily mean that I can’t be creative and make meaningful things.  I think I freaked out a little because I assumed that being able to afford things made me more doctory, and therefore less creative.  Likewise, I get freaked out when I spend too much time roaming around the theatres or in my head because it means that if I pursue the creative stuff I will be poor.  In the end I have to be grateful and appreciative that for the moment, I am able to be both creative with my spare time, as well as able to afford relatively nice things (although I am in doubt as to how much longer I am going to be able to do both).  And that I don’t have to worry about being like anyone else, because I am me, who likes getting a nice hair cut, and can afford to do that (for the moment) while she goes home and works on becoming the artist that will one day inspire and delight and 

So yes, getting my hair cut yesterday was a cathartic experience, not only for its pure hotness, but also for the cataclysm of thoughts that ensued.  I’m not entirely sure if all of the above made sense, but basically I wanted to say that I am very lucky that I can afford things; being able to afford things sometimes bothers me because I feel it means I am not spending enough time being artistic/creative and that I simply don’t deserve it; I am worried that if I don’t do creative things full time I’m not really creative and my skills will never equal those of my peers; and that if I do pursue a creative path I will have no money.  Which starts the cycle off again.  Ideally I would earn lots of money from being super creative as well as contributing something meaningful to the world.  Which I will do one day and realise that at this point it is not the time.

And hopefully Norway will give me time and space to get back down to the basics and work things out.

In the mean time, I have hot hair!

Short version of post for those who don’t want to read the whole thing:

Basically I got my hair cut at an expensive hairdressers and it made me freak out that I was selling out and losing my creative mojo to becoming a self-absorbed well-off non-creative doctor.