Apparently, beards are in. I see guys wearing beards, growing beards, basically reveling in facial hair. I’m not so sure I’m a fan of it.

I don’t say that because my own facial hair is scanty. It takes me forever to grow anything close to resembling a beard, but I’m okay with that. I’m really not bitter about being beardless.

I just think it’s one thing to grow a beard and another to go for the Paul Bunyan look. I mean, what’s up with all the long scraggly beards? Is there a cult out there looking for another David Koresh?

I heard someone say that she was looking for bearded and burly in her men. I guess the blue ox and the red plaid shirt are optional. Hopefully the axe isn’t a requirement.

All that to say this. You be you. Don’t do something because everyone else is doing it. Don’t grow a beard because it’s suddenly fashionable. Life is way too short to live it for the sake of pleasing others.

If you really and truly want to grow a beard down to your knees, don’t listen to me. You go for it and you grow it. If you want to be clean-shaven, you do that.

I’ve been around long enough to know that these trends never stay very long. The more trendy you are today, the more likely it will be that your children will one day look at photos of you and laugh and say things like, “You actually went out in public dressed like that?”

So once again, you be you. Be yourself. In the words of one E. E. Cummings, “To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.”

Don’t ever stop fighting to be you. Ever.