Raising awareness, actively taking the time to learn the issues and their associated intricacies is important. Understanding the minutiae related to the matters of prostate cancer and men’s health, and internalizing them enough in order to be able to effectively engage your potential public (aka your friends and family) involves a lot of effort and time that could alternatively be spent doing other productive activities (aka relaxing on the couch).
Your conscience however would not let you stand idly by while there was something you knew you could do to make a difference in someone’s life, a difference that could affect someone’s health. You would find yourself hounded by questions; “why didn’t I get up?” they would posit. “Why didn’t I speak up?” they would persist. “Why was I not more involved and active?” Your frankly quite annoying conscience would continue. The truth is not far away, because as we all know from high school physics, an object at rest wants to remain at rest. The resting object in this case being our good selves.
So we find ourselves before a dichotomy; we can take the initiative and exert ourselves and do the legwork to raise awareness of the important issues, or alternatively we could lounge about and relax, while our mind s relentlessly hound us for not making the extra effort. It is a difficult choice. Luckily however, there is a way to get the best of both worlds.
Stay thy blade. This month, all you have to do is nothing. When you wake up in the morning, don’t lather your face with shaving cream. Don’t pick up your favorite brand of blades, that may or may not be arranged in bunches of three or more, potentially inflicting severe wounds that may or may not be invisible until you splash some aftershave on them.
Signal to the world this month that you are aware of the issues and what they mean for the health and wellness of men around the world. Stand tall during the first week as they ask you “what is that you have above your lip?” while they smirk knowingly. Be firm during the second week as your alleged mustache begins to take shape, when you can proudly state that you are now a fully fledged participant in Movember. This will ideally spark an intelligent conversation on what can be done on the individual and micro levels to contribute to the global efforts geared towards addressing these issues; it will serve to keep Movember at the forefront of people’s minds.
During the third week, you will have read enough on the internet through random memes and assorted inspirational posters as you scroll down your various social media feeds, that you should be ready to address any questions that are sent your way. By this time in the month you will know enough that you will probably be trying to [not so subtly] push the conversation towards the topic of your now much more respectable mustache. Instead of making it about your mustache though, go ahead and use the attention showered upon your ‘stache and redirect it to more pressing issues, like Movember intended.
By the fourth week, your attachment to your new hairy companion will be strengthened but it will begin demanding maintenance. If unkempt, it will stick out at odd angles and make its presence felt. You will however look around you and realize that you no longer stand alone sporting a mustache, but that you are among many Movemberists.
It is one of the advantages of our time that we can so simply and so easily become part of a large wave of humanity through as simple a gesture as growing a mustache, and through that simple gesture reminds others of an important cause, all the while looking awesome while doing it.
