It’s been weeks since we were first quarantined here in the U.S. and I am sure that it’s been feeling a lot like groundhog day every day. I joke around telling family and friends that I was built for quarantine, but in all seriousness maybe I am? One of my friends from basic training back in 2004 shared with me a quote that his grandmother shared with him at a very young age, “If you are always ready, you never have to worry about getting ready”. Fast forward to 2020, 16 years later and those words couldn’t be more true. I have learned to live my life around those words, they have improved and changed my life for the better. Let me just share some insight based on my life and those powerful words.
Back in middle school, I received an allowance for cutting the grass and washing my parent’s cars. It wasn’t much, but it would last me about two weeks. Out of the allowance that I received twice a month, a portion of it was hair cut money. I have always liked being clean-cut, but waiting two weeks for a haircut wasn’t cutting it (No pun intended). One day, I decided that something needed to change, I used my haircut money to purchase a pair of hair clippers instead. My plan was simple, cut my hair just as the barbers did, was I mistaken. For the next 6 months, I would practice on my own head, my hair couldn’t grow fast enough, it was horrific, to say the least. There was NO YouTube, NO Google, there were just books at the local library, my eyes that I used to watch barbers with at my local barbershop and my wiliness to learn. I was laughed at, bullied, mocked all because my head looked like it was cut by a weed wacker for weeks at a time. I would offer my friends free haircuts if they let me use their heads at practice models, some agreed, a majority declined. By the summer of my freshman year of high school in 1996, my hair cuts were no longer amateur status. The same people that use to laugh at me were the same people that were now waiting in line on Thursday and Friday afternoons to get haircuts from me at my parent’s house. My haircuts were so good that I ended up charging for the works of art. Little did I know, me making the decision to try something new would end up becoming my first business. I have been cutting my hair since 1994, I did the math on how much I have saved at $10 a haircut which is what I use to charge, and let me tell you, it adds up.
The moral of this story is just what the title states, it’s the little things in life that make the biggest differences. Looking back now connecting the dots, how many times did I need a haircut for some event and time was a concern and how about now with the Pandemic and barbershops being closed. The more you learn in this life, the more versatile that you become. The more you can practice Robinson’s grandmothers wise words “If you are always ready, you never have to worry about getting ready” the more you can be prepared for life’s future unknowns.
Head up, Eyes Forward
