Life is like learning to shave

I don't remember my father ever teaching me to shave my face (just to be sure we are clear about what I am talking about when I say shave).



I remember him slagging me off about my teenage bum-fluff as we call it here in Ireland.



I have no idea at what age exactly I decided that I must shave my face.



Anyway, he never showed me and I taught myself.



For years I flitted between various shaving products such as gels, foams, creams, oils and all the rest.



Then last year I came across a great website for so-called male grooming. It's hard to win with a term like "male grooming".



For example today at a training class one of the guys there made a reference to fixing his hair and one of the ladies in the class called him and all the guys sitting around him (myself included) "a bunch of women".



Now it's interesting that when women say to a group of men "you're like a bunch of women" it's both derogatory and acceptable. I'm not sure when men say the same thing to other men while in the company of women whether it's acceptable. A strange one for sure.



Back to my beard.



So I found this website (I can share the link if you really want it) and it was really excellent. I have to admit I felt a bit sheepish reading it, like it was somehow obscene.



One thing really struck me about this website. It had some great tips for shaving one's face. Now don't get me wrong. There are plenty of websites out there that teach men how to shave.



This site was better. It explained the process and explained what needed to happen and in what order. It explained what works best and why.



I was skeptical and curious at the same time so I made an order of two items. I won't bore you with the details but one year on I think this was one of the best things I ever did. I don't hate shaving my face any longer.



I strikes me that when my little boys are old enough to start shaving I will sit down with them and teach them how to do this right.



Which brings me to why life is like learning to shave.



Surely for ages and ages fathers have stood next to their young sons and taught them the very same thing, how to shave.



And despite the progress in machining precision metals to make blades for David Beckham's soft face (to give him the best shave he can get and all that) the fundamental act of shaving is still pretty much what it has always been. In truth it's hard to see how this could change with the passage of time.



Likewise with life, there are some things that just seem to happen in cycles and despite the fact that people before us already mastered all of it, when the time comes for new generations to step up and do it they have to start all over again.



Take for example the idea of military conflict.



No matter what way you look at it, people have been fighting with other people for as long as the history books have recorded it. We know ultimately this to be a big waste of time. There are no real winners when it comes to armed conflict. Eventually everyone agrees that the best thing to do is to stop killing one another.



Time passes.



Then some other conflict spirals out of control and we are off again.



So, without simplifying this idea too much, it seems to be our destiny. Our destiny is the destiny of repeat learning. We know what happened in the past and why. Yet for some reason known only to humans we see fit to start over and learn everything from first principles, making all the same costly mistakes each and every time.



It seems the concept of knowledge management is redundant. We prefer to learn the hard way why sticking your hand in a bunch of nettles is a bad idea.