Blackening the Hair

By Kim See Bong

At the solicitation of my wife, complaining that I look so gray-haired, today I had to have my hair blackened. This was a great event for me who had been, though not openly, rather proud of my gray hair deep in my heart as a symbol of age and experience.

However, it took me such a long time to realize to the contrary that gray hair means only having gone over the hill, past my prime and gone to seed that I made up my mind, to my disappointment, to rectify this mishap as a matter of course.

Referring to animals, they modify their physical appearance only to preserve their life or to attract a mating partner. And most frequently such a modification is a natural protective coloring, not any artificial, externally-imposed method. They change their color in order to ally themselves to nature.

However, what is it in the case of humans? To protect their life or to be sexually attractive as with animals? I am disappointed and disillusioned with myself in that my coloring was for neither purpose and because it denotes that I am ashamed of getting hoary, but this cannot be concealed only by the exterior change of my hair.

Blackening my hair to appear young is nothing but a way of camouflaging myself only to show my fragility _ a sign of nervousness about my life advancing in age and a cop-out for the period of life I have been through so far.

I am getting old and advancing toward the category of ``an old man.'' Nevertheless, if I hate the gray hair growing on my head only because it smacks of age, am I so idiotic and arrogant as to believe that time doesn't flow with me and that nature doesn't contain me.

Who doesn't know that a witness cannot give evidence of age unless he can remember being born? Age matters only when he or she is ageing. After all, it is not the black hair but my mind that is getting old.

Braving out such knowledge, I had my hair blackened. If we believe in one thing and behave in another way, we call it hypocrisy. Then I am no less a person than a hypocrite. Evidently, I used to believe, before I got to this age, that men are like wine.

Some turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age. Ageing is something to be proud of, not to be ashamed of. How old I am is nothing but a matter of numbers. On the contrary, I behaved the other way by blackening the hair.

Ageing is a course like the cycles of the four seasons. Summer can't miss the spring and neither can winter be jealous of the fall. They are only part of the seasons nature allows us, for which we can only be thankful. However, for the hoary hair, why aren't I so chin-up as to embrace it?

When someone is born in a house, he or she grows up there. When they become grown-ups and bear children and grandchildren, the house gets older too. Then are we right if we feel ashamed of the house and try to tear it down? The old house is the credit we have accrued throughout our life, not a thing to throw away.

It is only the body that deteriorates with age, not the soul residing in it. The clothes covering my body can't dominate the I under them.

At this moment when I am becoming so weak and fragile with age both in body and mind, isn't it the right moment for me to modify my concept of the body which I have to remove someday in the near future. Age weakens the body but enriches the mind. Don't miss the black hair but admire your age.

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The writer is administrator of the GLS Academy in Daechi-dong, Seoul.