Neftali Martin is an award-winning barber in southern Spain. Last year, he had to undergo chemotherapy for lymphatic cancer. When he started to lose his hair, he went to his workplace and asked a friend and coworker, Joel Ortega, to shave his head.
After cutting his friend’s visibly patchy hair down to the scalp, Ortega gave a touching lesson in empathy and solidarity: with no hesitation, he turned the razor on his own head, shaving off his own hair. Martin couldn’t hold in his tears as Ortega swiftly finished cutting, caressed his friend’s head, and proceeded to clean the hair trimmings off them both. Martin says that Ortega told him, “You’re not alone.”
The video is from last April but it continues to receive views: more than 14 million, so far, between TikTok and Instagram!
In the Instagram post, Martin says that Ortega is “not just a coworker; for me he’s a brother.”
The solidarity didn’t stop there; the barbershop uploaded a video a month later in which the now totally bald Martin leads his coworkers in a dance. The hashtags include #positivemind and one using colorful language indicating that he won’t let cancer have the upper hand.
Neftali Martin’s TikTok post from January 2 shows him with a full head of hair again, with the caption “Adios 2021, bye cancer!”
And today we celebrate...