Is always the one I don’t have.

I think more beard helps shape my face. Then it hides it. Elongates it. Or widens it.

It is never quite right.

When I grow it past the collar of my shirts, it gets hard to eat food. I don’t mean that I get food in it. I mean, the food just starts to hit my beard before my mouth. I cut it back so that I don’t eat my own hair. But then I feel half naked. Even with plenty of beard.

I shear it in the summer like I’m a sheep, ridding my winter’s coat for a tight look. Then my family doesn’t speak to me for at least a week. They say a stranger is living in the house.

Of course, I haven’t shaved it off in a decade. I don’t really know what the skin looks like under there, but I have a guess. I dream that it is smooth, the jaw is angular, like a leading man’s. I’m sure I look dashing.

There is something to the perpetual disappointment and dissatisfaction. It is like my age-old pursuit of the perfect system for storing my CDs. That one never got solved.

Is there a word for this paradox? If there isn’t, I’m sure the Germans can help us create one. We can cobble disappointment and dissatisfaction into a word. Perhaps they will simply say We already have the word: angst. [Be sure to pronounce the A with a long ah sound.]

I trimmed again this week, because its summer and I wanted to and I thought it would make me happy. And it relieves the dissatisfaction, but not the disappointment. That always comes back.

*

There is another way to look at this, however. The one I remind myself all of the time.

The person in the mirror isn’t real. He doesn’t exist. He is merely a projection, anticipation of me, who I am put against an imagined me. A simulacrum. One that can’t be perfect, but is measured against the best our imaginations have to offer.

Then we double-down on the self-critique by comparing that imperfect representation of life against other people. Their perfect jawlines, fuller beards, or let’s be honest, whole heads full of hair. I’d just take a better set of eyebrows!

All of this is imagined! Not one bit is real.

There is no perfect face, cut, or beard. No perfect person, look, or opportunity.

We are only as happy as we allow ourselves to be.