She Broke Your Throne and Cut Your Hair

Originally posted March 16, 2018.

I was watching Thor: Ragnarok recently, and got me thinking about people who are forced to evolve into their next selves.

Thor's long golden locks were part of his pride and his identity, as was his hammer and his role as the God of Thunder. But in this movie, he's kidnapped, his hammer destroyed, his head shaved, and he's forced to fight as a gladiator. It made me think of these lines from the Leonard Cohen song Hallelujah:

She tied you to a kitchen chair

She broke your throne and she cut your hair

And from your lips she drew the hallelujah

There's something symbolic about going through a forced mutilation -- someone or something taking away your spirit as well as your hair -- that I find interesting. Samson's not the only one with strength residing in his hair, we all feel that power to some degree. 

When Furiosa was abducted as a child, she wasn't just branded with Immorten Joe's logo. Her hair was removed to make her just another thing he owned, another piece that blended in with his War Boy Army. 

But in both Furiosa's case as well as Thor's, the abduction and head shaving wasn't just something sad and horrific. The unintended consequences were that it launched them into the next, stronger, much more powerful versions of themselves. The transformation that we all go through at different points in our lives, but just implemented by events beyond their control.

So sometimes when I look around at all the people I see at the cancer center, bald or losing hair or appearing with different degrees of shorn haircuts we didn't choose, I don't see people with something taken away from them anymore. But people who've become something new, and something better than they were before.