You can always tell what season it is by looking at my hair. In January, my curls will be happily frizz-free, yet as April and May roll in my hair will start to resemble a fall dandelion as a result of the increasing humidity of the coming spring. Thus begins open season for the annual curly hair product hunt.

What’s wrong with my current product, you may ask? Nothing. I simply develop a fear of the afro my curls threaten to morph into by the tropics of July, causing me to question the reliability of my current product to prevent this potential catastrophe. Soon afterwards I scramble to the nearest drug store and buy every product that claims it’s especially for curly-haired people. We really are our own breed.

The grass always seems greener on the other side, and in my case, that new gel or conditioner always seems better than mine. I often end up spending way too much of my paycheck on elegantly-packaged products to discover they don’t work. In my defeated state, I always resort back to my old product, and what do you know? It works the best of all.

It’s human nature to search for something that’s supposedly better. Few of us can resist the enticement of things like the latest chachki, sometimes referred to as “bigger and better mousetraps—” rightly so, because each time we look for something bigger or better, we end up trapped again. Replacing an old iPhone or camera for the next model is understandable, but don’t carelessly discard something good solely for the possibility of something better. As Joni Mitchell croons in “Big Yellow Taxi”, “Don’t it always seem to  go / that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?”