Picture this. It's a beautiful Texas fall day. High in the 90s, low in the 70s, and blue skies as far as the eye can see. You know, fall in Texas. Where the leaves change colors sometime around Christmas and you can still get a sunburn walking to your mailbox.
It just so happens that I have a little downtime between where I need to be and whatever the world has to offer. And today, the world has to offer one heck of a haircut.
I've had just about every haircut imaginable. Chili bowl, undercut, mohawk, fauxhawk, the Liam Gallagher, the Noel Gallagher, Nikki Sixx, and everything in between. At 42 years old, I find myself walking this strange tightrope between presenting myself as a respectable professional and expressing who I actually am.
Heck, at this point, I don't know that I care about looking professional anymore. I'd rather look like me.
But my mullet had gotten atrocious.
As I've aged, my grays have become increasingly wiry. I understand Jack Russell terriers so much more now. It's like every gray hair has developed its own personality, none of which have any interest in cooperating with the others.
The crazy thing is, although the mop top has changed over the years, I'm a creature of habit. My friend Jordan has cut my hair for nearly 20 years, and she's awesome at it. We both grew up in the emo scene. Ya know, tight black skinny jeans, emo swoops, guyliner, and "TONIGHT WILL BE THE NIGHT THAT I WILL FALL FOR YOU, OVER AGAIN" playing somewhere in the background.
Jordan isn't just my hairstylist. She's a close friend. So the thought of letting someone else cut my hair felt a little like Judas collecting his thirty pieces of silver.
But people want what people want.
Enter Manny.
Manny is a relatively new acquaintance. One of those guys you barely know but somehow feel like you've known your entire life.
Kaitlyn and I serve at a local startup church on Sundays and pretty much whenever we're needed in between. What a lot of people don't realize about a startup church is that, for the whole thing to work, you've got to serve. A LOT.
Setup team. Praise and worship.
Hospitality. Children's ministry. Babies. Elementary school.
Sometimes you're teaching kiddos about Jesus, and other times you're praying for your own deliverance from a room full of screaming toddlers.
Maybe that's too real. But sometimes that's ministry.
Anyway, about two months earlier, I was talking to our pastor about how I felt a little out of place at church. Not because anyone had made me feel unwelcome. Quite the opposite, actually. But because I couldn't shake the feeling that I was the odd man out.
Remember that old Sesame Street song? "One of these things is not like the others."
Yeah. That one.
At six feet tall, with long hair and a body that looks like it's survived a West Coast graffiti war, I don't exactly blend in with the PTA families. The suburbanites. The Costco purchasers and Target shoppers.
Nothing wrong with any of that. They're wonderful people. I just felt different.
As my friend Pauly likes to remind me, I look like a cross between Stephen Wilson Jr. and Jeffrey Dahmer.
Not exactly the prototype for suburban church leadership, but these are the genes I was given, so I digress.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, I met Manny.
Now, before getting my ears lowered, I decided to stop by a renowned cigar lounge. I had some time to kill, and there's hardly a better way to spend an afternoon than sitting down with a good cigar and absolutely nowhere to be.
I was wearing my Brolo hat. The one with our "Light Up & Lean In" mantra.
The owner noticed it and asked if I was a brand rep.
Now, I could have launched into the whole story about how Kaitlyn and I have poured our hearts, lives, and resources into this little cigar company. How we're betting on an idea that connection matters more than hype. How this thing is so much more personal than simply selling tobacco.
But I didn't.
"Yup. I rep cigars."
Truthfully, I wasn't there to sell Brolo. I was there as a consumer. Just a dude killing time before getting a haircut.
I picked up a Machetero, a budget-friendly Meerapfel cigar, and an Arayo. The owner asked a few high-level questions about Brolo, and I answered them, albeit somewhat vaguely. Not because I don't believe in what we're building, but because I wasn't interested in turning every interaction into a sales pitch.
Sometimes I just want to be a guy who enjoys cigars.
But then the train derailed.
This particular establishment has multiple lounges within the same business. Access depends on your level of investment. Spend enough money, and you can enjoy the privilege of sitting in a different room from everyone else.
Now, if you know anything about Brolo, you know our philosophy is pretty simple.
Everyone gets a seat at the table.
I've never been particularly fond of the velvet-rope mentality. The idea that the quality of your company should somehow be determined by the thickness of your wallet has always rubbed me the wrong way.
But hey, different strokes.
So I found myself in the main lounge. You know, with all the peasants.
As I sat there enjoying my cigar, I overheard a conversation between two gentlemen. They were talking about two brothers struggling with alcoholism.
Immediately, my ears perked up.
For those unfamiliar with my story, I've spent more than a decade in recovery. Addiction isn't something I've merely studied or observed from a distance. I've lived it. I've watched it destroy relationships, consume people I love, and nearly take everything from me.
So when I hear someone talking about alcoholism, particularly when they're talking about people they care about, something inside me leans in.
For about thirty seconds, I sat there listening. And then I started feeling uncomfortable. Not because of what they were saying, but because I felt like I was eavesdropping on something deeply personal.
So I got up, walked over, and introduced myself.
"Hey guys, I couldn't help but overhear your conversation. And honestly, it made me feel like I might be exactly where I'm supposed to be today. Mind if I join you?"
One of the gentlemen, Cabinet Selección in hand, looked at me and said:
"Actually, this is a client meeting, and we'd prefer to keep it that way."
Ouch.
I stood there for a moment, processing what had just happened.
"That makes sense," I responded.
And I quietly walked back to my corner, sat down, and continued smoking my Machetero.
Wondering what could have been.
Internally, though?
I was raging.
Do you know who I am?
I'm here to help.
I've lived through the very thing you're talking about.
You have no idea what I might have been able to offer.
And there it was.
My ego.
Not theirs.
Mine.
Now, don't get me wrong. I understand boundaries. I understand business meetings. Heck, I'm in the business of making sales myself. And I certainly understand that two strangers aren't obligated to invite some long-haired, tattooed guy into their conversation simply because he overheard something that resonated with him.
But in that moment, I didn't feel like I had been given a boundary.
I felt like I had been dismissed.
And there's a difference between what someone does to you and what you tell yourself they've done to you.
At least, that's what I'm learning.
My immediate reaction was to make assumptions. About their motives. Their character. Their priorities. I told myself they cared more about closing a sale than helping someone struggling with addiction.
But here's the uncomfortable truth.
I didn't actually know that.
I knew what I'd heard. I knew what I'd experienced. But everything else was a story I had written in my own head.
And wouldn't you know it, in that story, I was the good guy.
The compassionate one.
The one who cared.
The one who understood.
Funny how that works.
I had walked into that lounge already carrying some preconceived ideas about its culture. The private rooms, the hierarchy, the prestige. And the moment someone rejected my invitation to connect, I used it as confirmation of everything I already believed.
Prestige over patina.
At least, that's how I wanted to see it.
But the longer I sat there, the more uncomfortable I became with my own response.
Because if my intention was genuinely to help, why was I so offended that they didn't want my help?
If my desire was to serve, why did I suddenly feel the need to establish my credentials?
If I truly believed that everyone deserves a seat at the table, why was I so quick to judge the people sitting at another one?
That's the thing about ego.
It doesn't always show up wearing arrogance. Sometimes it shows up wearing good intentions.
Sometimes ego looks like wanting recognition. Sometimes it looks like needing to be right. Sometimes it looks like believing that because you've walked through something difficult, you've earned the right to speak into someone else's life.
And sometimes it looks like being offended when someone doesn't recognize the value you believe you bring.
I didn't need those gentlemen to know my story.
I wanted them to.
There's a difference.
And that realization stung considerably more than their rejection.
Because growth requires us to confront the parts of ourselves we'd rather explain away.
It's easy to recognize pride in other people. We can spot arrogance from across the room. We can identify entitlement, vanity, and self-importance without breaking a sweat.
But recognizing those same characteristics in ourselves?
That's a different animal.
Scripture tells us in Proverbs 16:18 that pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
I've heard that verse a thousand times.
But I think we often imagine pride as something loud. Something obvious. The guy pounding his chest, demanding respect, telling everyone how important he is.
Yet pride can be remarkably quiet.
It can sit in the corner of a cigar lounge, smoking a budget-friendly cigar, convincing itself that everyone else is the problem.
And the danger isn't simply that ego makes us unpleasant people.
It's that ego makes us unteachable.
When we're convinced that our intentions are pure, we stop examining our motives. When we're convinced that we're right, we stop listening. When we're convinced that we've been wronged, we stop asking what the situation might reveal about us.
And when we stop examining, listening, and learning, we stop growing.
I think about this a lot in recovery.
One of the greatest gifts recovery has given me is the understanding that I don't have to be the smartest guy in the room. I don't have to have all the answers. I don't have to turn every experience into an opportunity to prove that I've learned something.
Sometimes the most meaningful thing I can do is shut up and listen.
And sometimes the most humbling thing I can do is accept that someone doesn't need what I have to offer.
That doesn't make my experience less valuable.
It just means the world doesn't revolve around it.
The irony of that afternoon wasn't lost on me.
Earlier, I'd been wrestling with feeling out of place at church because I didn't look like everyone else. And now I was sitting in a cigar lounge, upset because someone hadn't welcomed me into their space. In both situations, I was allowing my perception of how other people saw me to influence how I saw myself.
And perhaps even more importantly, how I saw them.
All because I was so concerned with being understood.
Maybe that's where ego does some of its greatest damage.
It convinces us that being understood is more important than understanding.
That being respected is more important than respecting.
That having something valuable to say is more important than knowing when to say it.
I eventually finished my cigar and headed out to get that haircut.
And while Manny was working on my increasingly unruly mop, I kept thinking about that interaction.
Not because I had come up with some clever response I wished I'd delivered.
But because I realized the experience had exposed something in me that still needed work.
And isn't that the point?
Not the haircut. Not the cigars. Not the recognition.
The work.
The ongoing, uncomfortable, sometimes embarrassing process of becoming a better human being.
A better husband. A better friend. A better brother. A better follower of Christ.
I've spent years learning that transformation rarely happens when everything is going my way. More often, it happens when something rubs me the wrong way and I have to decide whether I'm going to defend myself or examine myself.
That afternoon, two strangers didn't invite me into their conversation.
And somehow, without even knowing it, they gave me something worth thinking about.
I went into that lounge believing I might have something to teach someone.
I left realizing I still had something to learn.
Maybe that's what growth looks like.
Not being the most important person at the table.
Not even being invited to the table.
But being humble enough to recognize that every encounter, even the uncomfortable ones, has something to teach us.
Because the moment we become too important to be corrected, we become too proud to grow.
And I'd rather spend the rest of my life growing than the rest of my life being right.
