I have an unusually long hair on my arm

As the title suggests, this is about an arm hair that is significantly longer than the others.

I seriously considered posting a picture of it, but upon further consideration, I concluded that it would creep a lot of people out. Consequently, I'm reduced to describing it.

It is located on the outside of my arm only a couple inches from my shoulder. I also estimate it to be about four and a half times the length of a typical hair on my upper arm.

I have trimmed it in the past, but it always regrew to its former length. Anyone who remembers their basic biology or anatomy would know why - hair growth is controlled by the follicle, located inside the skin. Somehow, this one is getting buggy signals.

The shower is a good place to think. I was in the shower one day, contemplating this strand of rogue keratin, when an (allegedly) old Japanese metaphor came to me. "The nail that stands out will be hit by the hammer." It's a horrible lesson, emphasizing conformity and punishing individualism or ambition.

Such is the internal monlogue of the insecure:

Simplicio: Cut that hair! It's long and unusual, and therefore gross. Besides, who knows who might check you out, chat you up, invite you back to her place, and, right before the good stuff, get turned off by this freakish follicular flap? And ohmigod, what if it's cancerous?

Then, I thought, instead of cutting this hair, or ignoring it, I should celebrate this quirk of physiology. I will keep it as a reminder that uniformity is not the ideal - that we need to have something about us that makes us stand out from the crowd. Also, what is noteworthy is such, not necessarily because it is unusual in an absolute sense, but because it is remarkable within its specific environment. My gifts in math and science were not at all evident to me while I was in graduate school - but when I emerged from that rarefied environment to the wider world, I realized that I had something to offer the world.

Sagredo: Cut that hair and you move one step closer to conformity, to a standard of body image externally driven, to a perfectionism that rejects our basic human property of imperfection, all for vanity. What folly, that a man cannot find the personal courage to embrace his unique traits as anything other than imperfections, or place undue emphasis on the physical at the cost of spiritual and intellectual growth.

But then what about the double standard I set regarding nose hairs? Are some not unusually long? Didn't someone go from unusually long nose hairs to become the junior senator of Minnesota? Isn't the quest for universality in morality and philosophy one of the greatest sources of destruction and despair, in the 20th century as well as all the others?

Salviati: Ah, wise words, Sagredo. But I detect hints at forming a universally applicable principle. While embracing the physical imperfections, take care that you make allowances for the limits of personal inconsistency. They need not reflect an illogical mind, or an immature philosophy - rather, the principle of consistency and universality should be subordinate to the superordinate goods of practicality, societal norms, and personal preferences. For we exist in the real, material world, not merely an abstraction where the individual is an island, and therefore, completely free.

Then, I considered the psychological implications of attempting to establish a philosophy of principle upon a body hair.

Me: You're talking about a fucking hair. Now finish the damn shower before you drive up the water bill, you self-indulgent ass!

The hair remains, a reminder of both the beauty of the unusual, the perils of universalism, and the fragility of mental health.