I Dyed My Hair Pink And Why You Should, Too
There are only so many opportunities for the choices we make
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Yesterday, a beautiful Tuesday afternoon, I dyed my hair pink. To be accurate, my sister did it and she did a great job.
Temporary color, don’t use if you experienced allergic reactions to hair color in the past. That was said on the box of “flamingo pink” I had bought for 6 euros that morning after work.
12- 15 hair washes. If contact with eyes, wash out immediately and contact a doctor. Don’t swallow. Keep away from children.
And yet I had hesitated for so long. Why?
Partly, I think, because I was worried whether it would look good. Partly I hesitated because I am lazy. My sister who at fifteen dyes her hair now for over three years herself told me it would eventually fade into a reddish orange-ish tone and then I would need to come up with bleaching again or pinker. So, to keep my hair pretty, I knew I had to put some effort into it even after it was done. Sigh.
But the main reason was that I worried about what others would think of it. Not that I would see many people, eh, but what would my boyfriend think of me? My colleagues at work? My professor and the other students when online school starts again?
What finally made me do it was the fact that it was temporary.
Temporality is a strange thing. It takes away a lot of the pressure and stress and overthinking that comes with decisions considered permanent.
But why? Because it allows us to reverse it? My hair is pink for at least the next 12–15 washes. Moreover, everyone knows that I am a person who dyes her hair pink. I already went to work, outside in the park, told my boyfriend, and posted a picture of it on the internet.
But since it will eventually wash out I didn´t overthink it as I would have if it was permanent.
I think we like temporality because it looks safer. We can still make a different decision. My hair will get blonde again and I can choose a different color if I want to.
But maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe we only appreciate things because they are temporary. I love the color of my hair right now and I want to fully appreciate it while it lasts.
I recently realized that you know, there are only so many times I can choose an ice cream flavor. There are only so many times I get to play a round of chess with my sister, sit with her in the kitchen at my parents’ house and let her bleach my hair. That I can weave my hand through my boyfriend’s hair or make kimbap's with him on a Sunday afternoon only so many times. Or go for a hike with my mom. Because one day the pink is washed out completely.
These decisions only matter because they are not indefinite. I can only make them so often and that is what makes them special.
The less often we can make them the harder they are to make. If I had to choose one flavor for the rest of my life or whether I had to choose now ice cream for the last time it would be equally hard. Not because I had to decide whether I wanted to eat yogurt-blueberry for the next 80 years, but because I had only this one opportunity to choose.
This is why it’s harder to choose a major than to choose ice cream. Not because it lasts longer (though it probably will) but because we won’t have the opportunity to make that choice as often as we can choose ice cream.
In Mortal question, Tomas Nagel writes that the meaningfulness of something is independent of duration or size. Our lives would not be any more or any less meaningful if we lived forever or if we weren´t small mammals but dinosaurs with a life expectancy of two hundred years.
The color of my hair wouldn’t matter more if it stayed pink forever.
When I washed my hair this morning after I came home from work, I could notice a streak of pink wash down my body and disappear into the sink of my shower.
There it went, one of the 12–15 hair washes.
Just like most of our decisions are. Where we study and what we major in. The jobs we apply to and the ones we take. The ice cream flavor, the movie, the shirt we pick in the morning. The books we read, the conversations we have, the people we meet, the coffee order, and the color of tulips in the supermarket.
One day, I will stand in my shower and the last particle of flamingo pink will leave my hair.
When that happens, I can make the decision again. I can decide whether I will buy a new box of flamingo pink or whether I will leave my hair with its natural color or whether I try something new.
Because the color is only temporary. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
