1995. I’m camping out in Yellowstone National Park with 75 of my closest friends – well, my ninth grade class – on a field trip. The girls are sitting around the tents gossipping, and we start talking to the beautiful foreign exchange student from Latin America, Minerva.

Minerva has perfect bronzed skin, round, smooth cheeks, perfect teeth, and gorgeous black curly hair. She’s so nice, we all want to look like her, and we start asking her, “What is your secret? What do you wash your face with?”

None of us can believe her answer: “Soap and water,” she says.

“What kind of soap?”

“Bar of soap.”

Here she is, surrounded by Montana teenagers with a dozen facial products each packed with them: Benzoyl peroxide cream, salicylic acid pads, day face wash, night face wash, toner, witch hazel, apricot scrub, Neutrogena, Oil of Olay, Proactiv, mud masks, sunscreen, Accutane (for those “lucky” enough to afford it) etc.

It just goes to show, beauty really is from the inside-out.

Soap and water.

What she probably wasn’t doing was eating the kind of diet we were eating, nor stripping her face of its natural oils and protective bacteria with harsh chemicals. She wasn’t waging war on her skin with weapons of mass destruction or harboring inflammation and disease in her body, and it showed.

When are we going to realize that enough is enough, and just get back to basics?

I haven’t used shampoo or conditioner in my hair for nearly 2 years now, and I constantly get complimented on my hair. I don’t use any shower gels or lotions on my skin other than simple ingredients like olive oil and coconut oil or pure soaps, and I constantly get told how healthy and soft my skin is. I brush and floss my teeth once a day, at night, and my oral hygenists have told me I have the healthiest teeth they’ve ever seen. It’s not that complicated, folks. Don’t let the swindlers tell you that it is. Keep a simple and pure diet and keep your products simple and pure, and beauty will come naturally.

A really interesting study came out this week showing men given shots of testosterone told fewer lies. http://mobile.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/health/121014/men-higher-testosterone-tend-lie-less-study-suggests

Other interesting points included: average person tells 1-2 lies/day, half of all lies come from 5% of people (low-testosterone people?)

This makes evolutionary sense if you consider that testosterone likely allowed men to band together, communicate, and cooperate in order to compete against their fiercest rival historically: the lion.

This also has really interesting implications. If you consider that lying peaks in children around the age of 7, it is before kids receive their last big testosterone surge during adolesence.

Then can you really punish someone for lying in court? They could argue they are low testosterone (and can prove it!).

I still believe that punishment will become a thing of the past. The more you understand about a person’s motives, chemical or otherwise, the less likely you are to treat them harshly.

It also makes me think about obesity, which causes the body to give off more estrogen than testosterone. I then thought of my mother, and how overweight she might have been when carrying us kids, and what effect that would have had on our testosterone or androgen, and might explain some differences in siblings, their body type differences, success, etc. Or not! :)

Just had a thought about parts versus the whole: The more independent you believe a person (or a system) is, the more likely you are to punish them if they fail. This may explain why the US has the highest incarceration rates IN THE WORLD. The old west attitude of “I pulled myself up by my bootstraps” fosters this attitude of severe independence that is not balanced with society as a whole.

Republicans are fond of highlighting business owners who started a profitable business “all on their own”. In fact, no one can create a business in a void. There are usually landlords, suppliers, regulatory agencies, and of course, CLIENTS.

The Republican party is also fond of such statements that favor the individual over the collective, such as gun control, anti-abortion, and smaller government.

It’s like our politics is personifying this ego vs. collective dynamic balance to the extremes.

The democratic side tends to look out for the whole group: social services, bigger government, more taxation of wealthy to balance the economic pain, recognizing that some people are profiting at the other’s expense.

I’m not saying either extreme is correct, but I’m definitely siding more toward the holistic or “whole picture” model over individual. This does come at a cost, and democracy is correct to balance group needs with individual needs, as we wouldn’t want to lose freedoms granted to individuals. However, sometimes the price for freedom is incarceration, rather than rehabilitation and identifying causal factors.

The older and wiser I get, the more I find myself distanced from drama.

There’s a biological reason for this. Are you ready?

If you closely analyze drama, it looks a lot like a sympathetic nervous system response: fight or flight. Drama is one person attacking another person, and that other person either fighting back or changing the subject, leaving, or being passive aggressive: Fight or flight.

Think of a roommate/lover drama situation you’ve found yourself in. You felt attacked. At that point you have a choice: let your “instincts” kick in – fight or flight.

OR………..

You can exercise option number 2: Listen, Love, and Problem-Solve.

Love is the only solution to drama.

I had someone admit to me recently: “Yeah, I’m having a lot of drama with my roommate, but it’s whatever, because I don’t care about her that much anyway.”

BINGO!!!

That admission is the source of all your drama with that roommate. Even if you haven’t said it straight out to her, she senses you don’t care about her. People are more sensitive than they like to show. She can tell by your actions and reactions that you don’t care about her, so she can’t give you a “Listen, Love, and Problem-Solve” response to anything you say, because she knows it won’t be returned. Instead, you get a fight or flight response from her.

And you get drama.

Someone told me recently that I appear “strategic” in my responses to people, as if my intelligence allows me to navigate personal conflicts. No! It is my COURAGE, not my intellect, that allows me to remain calm and not get caught up in drama.

You see, it is SCARY when someone appears to attack you with their words, or their silence! They may accuse you of something, they may say hurtful things, they may seemingly tell you they don’t love or care about you by what they say or do.

But if you truly love and care about a person, you have the COURAGE to look past their words and find the kernels of truth and the love behind what they are expressing. Always look for the good in a person, and you will find it.

It takes COURAGE to believe that you can get along with anyone. That you won’t be rejected by anyone. That you will never lose someone’s love. You must always act AS IF you will never lose someone’s love in order not to lose someone’s love. Understand?

It takes COURAGE not to go on the defensive when someone goes on the offensive against you. That’s why they say fools defend and offend.

The wise remain calm and look for creative ways to love, creative ways to solve problems. Getting caught up in drama taxes your nervous system and wastes your energy. And you don’t have energy to waste, right?

Keep calm and carry on.

And have the COURAGE to love, the courage to care, to look past our most primal nervous instincts that once kept us alive, but now keep us apart.