If you go back into some of the photos in this blog or elsewhere, you can see that I wore a full beard for about a year. The face change is not the first time and probably not the last. That means it comes and goes but not in a rapid succession. The people with whom I interact over a long period get to see both “faces” for a fair amount of time.
The last switch was about two weeks ago. I did some teasing in Facebook about going naked. I think the mind image that proposal brought up made a few folks a bit queasy. I didn’t say totally naked but they were free to interpret. It’s like politics and news reporting, I tell the truth but not always the whole truth, so help me God.
The most interesting aspect of the change is that no one spoke up. Perhaps they wanted to but were unsure about what was different.
Here is what I choose to believe. My friends and colleagues all know Dan Kautz the person, not Dan Kautz the face. Even my baby granddaughter Tessa (18 months) still pointed at me and called me “Papa” without hesitation. Of course she couldn’t ask me about what happened to my beard. She doesn’t know that a beard is an option.
At first I am thinking, “Is everyone blind?” Then I get to thinking about it and analyze what was going on. (I am a very analytical person as you know.) There are several options but I choose to believe what I said in the last paragraph. It is not that no one cares how my face looks; it is that I am judged far deeper than by what is or was on my chin. That is profound.