Strands of Hope: Navigating Dreams and Disappointments in a Salon Chair

My dear friend Brenda has a mantra, “Change your hair; change your life.” It can be an easy way to look at yourself with fresh eyes and renewed confidence. An edgier hairstyle can help you feel more creative and sophisticated, and your actions likely will mimic how you feel internally. Even a squirt of temporary hair color like purple or blue can imbue a person with a sense of playfulness or newfound spunkiness. I fully embrace that philosophy, so that’s why the conversation I had with my hair colorist in Athens is so heartbreaking.

She is thrilled to hear that I am from San Francisco because it’s her heart’s desire to someday live in the United States and she chokes up whenever the US national anthem plays. She also fantasizes that she will find her future husband in the US, but she admits to being depressed that her birthday is in a few days and she’s turning the ripe old age of…wait for it…28.

Parthenon, Athens, Greece

The heartbreaking part is that at only 27 years old, she has a huge dose of fatalism. She can’t see how she ever will escape Greece. As beautiful as it is here, she wants more, but she doesn’t have the ability to dream. She sees herself as having wasted too many years of her life already. So this person, who cuts and styles hair for a living—and changes people’s lives every day—can’t see a way to make her own dreams come true. She has to move on to her next appointment, so I don’t have the time to give her advice, but I also think some lessons you have to learn yourself in your own time.

But we had more time, there’s probably a million one-liners I could share with her. But mostly, I’d tell her that nothing is out of reach if you want it enough. And you are never too old to dream. And that Kevin and I are living proof that anything’s possible.