A haircut makes change visible before the old version has been swept away.

There is a strange overlap in the barber’s chair, where the new version of you exists and the evidence of the previous one is still on the floor. Change is usually gradual and invisible, so the moments when it becomes literal are unsettling in a way the change itself is not. People often feel odd for a day afterwards, not because the cut is wrong but because the transition happened faster than they could absorb it.

Give a visible change a few days before you judge it. What feels like regret on the first evening is often just the speed of it catching up with you.