Tuesday, August 09, 2005

The Three Weeks

Okay I have to get something completely different to get off my mind. I am not the most religious person in the Jewish world. I have been struggling with this and trying to figure out how, with the other issues in my life, to be more observant.

At the end of the Three Weeks last year, I had decided to try to follow a few more of the 'rules of the game.' While I have not been following all of them, I have attempted not to listen to music, and I have not cut my hair/shaved/etc. When I first started to this little adventure I had some negative feedback because, as I said to start with, my level of observance is less than ideal. The fact is I had a beard for over 10 years and my wife forced me to remove it about 6 years ago when I changed jobs to go into public accounting. I have wanted to regrow my beard since then and she was constantly upset with the idea. ( In the interest of full disclosure, when I had it before, the maintenance of the beard was not one of my strong points.) In additional to maintenace issues with the beard, I had it trimmed with a 'cut-out' portion on the checks that brought the beard basically down to just above the jaw line. (It was sort of a trimmed '70's' style beard.) In a brief conversation with my current boss, I am still in public accounting but with a different firm, I was complimented with looking very distinguished with the beard that is coming in rather nicely at this point. I mentioned this to my wife as a point, because she is forever telling me that beards don't look professional, that not everyone believes as she does.

After a brief discussion, she said I was 'allowed' to keep the beard if I was better at keeping it neat and trim. So now I have a this situation, I would like to keep the beard but I know my wife would prefer it to be gone. I did not mention my the managing partners observation as a way to get her to agree to me keeping the beard, and in fact this had never entered my mind. My plan, from last year, was to grow the beard during the three weeks and then to remove the beard at the end, at the proper time, and to continue being more or less clean shaven. ( I have maintained the mustache as part of the agreement when I shaved off the beard.)

Should I be considerate of my wife's opinion, knowing she doesn't like the beard, or should I keep the beard because that is my preference?

To some this may seem a little strange, but I am trying to deal with an evolving situation.

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