I am no scholar of the Holy Bible but I can remember enough from my school days to recall the basics of the story of Sansom and Delilah. Sansom was strong and powerful, breezing through life achieving his goals with his long hair flowing behind him as he went about his business. For some reason that escapes me now, probably something to do with love/envy/greed, somebody decided that they needed to take Sansom out of the running and somehow found out that the secret to Sansom’s strength was the length of his hair. Getting close enough to Sansom to cut off the source of his power was tricky but eventually they managed to get his wife Delilah to betray him by taking some scissors to his locks as he slept one night. Sansom awoke in the morning greatly diminished only to be overpowered by his enemies and that was the end of him. At least, that’s all I remember of the story.
I am REALLY bad at getting my haircut. A year or so back I could easily go 3 months without a haircut, allowing it to grow not to a length which could ever be described as ‘long’ but just to the point where it was obvious that I really needed a haircut to sort out the somewhat unruly mop that sat on my head. The thing about this is that I didn’t like my hair being longer. In fact I positively disliked it in this state. Looking at myself in a mirror it seemed to me that I looked older, more haggard, more tired once my hair had gone past its critical point. So, this year, I have tried to be more efficient at getting my hair cut more frequently, setting out with the intention of a haircut roughly every 6 weeks, and for a while it went fairly well. Sadly, over the last couple of months I have allowed myself to slip back into my old habit and as my hair has grown I have felt myself tiring, ageing and generally becoming less satisfied with myself. Obviously, I know that this has nothing whatsoever to do with my hair length (or does it?) – it just seems that way. Likewise, I am sure that Sansom wasn’t really strong because his hair was long but, more likely, he FELT strong because his hair was how he wanted it to be, like some kind of psychological scaffold upon which his powerful persona was built.
All of this is to report that, this morning, I finally called into the Barbers on my way into work and had my usual ‘Number 3 on the back and sides and short on the top to match in’. The result is that I instantly feel more content, energetic and ready to attack life. I think of this as The Reverse Sansom Effect. Take away Sansom’s hair and you remove the source of his power, take away mine and I awaken a little. There’s only one way to finish this post – it has to be a goofy picture of me post-haircut and raring to go and yes, I am pulling a stupid face…
Tim O'Hare 