Beard Idenity

So, I was reading wikipedia the other day while smearing peanut butter on my ass, and I came across the entry for "Beard." You can find many entertaining beard facts on the beard wiki page, including the term for the study of beards, "pogonology." The next passage I came across, however, led to a complete identity crisis.

In the course of history, men with facial hair have been ascribed various attributes such as wisdom and knowledge, sexual virility, masculinity, or high social status; and, conversely, filthiness, crudeness, or an eccentric disposition, such as in the case of a bum, hobo, hippie or vagrant.

I was pretty much feeling like the fucking man after the first half of that sentence. Even I wouldn't be able to find that many consecutive adjectives that would so aptly describe me in a row. It all hit the fan when "conversely" word popped up though. Filthiness? Crudness? (ok, that one is probably fair) Vagrant? HIPPIE??? I mean, if anything, I was more of a hippie far before I ever grew a beard.

So what does my beard say about ME? Who am I? What is the meaning of existence, or for that matter, my BEARDS existence. I always knew there would be a lot of soul searching during the beard-off, but I always thought it would be more directly with over the hurdles that are thrown at you during the beard growing process. The moments of self doubt, the battles with the beard itch, your secretary snickering at you as you come into work because her friend told her that you're a one pump chump even though it wasn't fair because there was like literally HOURS of very aggresive foreplay that went on before and you like hadn't gotten any for a few weeks and she was totally going superfast like some sort of giant squirrel creature. But I never understood that I would soon be looking into the very core of my being, essence, chi, ethos, once I had a full grown beard. How long should I grow the beard? Do I keep the beard?

Am I more Socrates or Marx?

Lincoln or Lenin?

Bunyan or Manson?

While going through this moment of self reflection and pondering, I couldn't help but think over and over of the old couple buying the portrait of Kramer in the one Seinfeld episode. The elderly couple were going back and forth, saying what it was they saw in the art:

"I sense great vulnerability. A man-child crying out for love. An innocent orphan in the post-modern world."
"I see a parasite. A sexually depraved miscreant who is seeking only to gratify his basest and most immediate urges."
"His struggle is man's struggle. He lifts my spirit."
"He is a loathesome, offensive brute. Yet I can't look away."
"He transcends time and space."
"He sickens me."
"I love it."
"Me too."

Perhaps that is what is great about the beard. I am none of these things, and yet all of these things.

Or maybe I am what everyone keeps telling me I am...this guy: