Beauty Needs No Makeup

…and Yet We Do

Unlike that of other life forms and animals, our brain and its awareness and ability to introspect, created an ego, which created its own unique struggle to find peace in existence.

As if existence requires inner peace, to be.

The ego hates the idea that it’s essentially riding shotgun in an animal. A sweaty, hungry, leaky, mortal animal? Nooooo. It belongs in a corner office with perpetual applause and entertainment. It deserves the best and is the best. Yet, it is part of a body that behaves like any other biological container - requiring food, shelter, breathable and temperate air, exuding odors and substances, and farts at the worst possible moment. A glamorous creature indeed.

What does the ego do with this conflicting reality set? How does it handle the cognitive dissonance?

It creates layers of scaffolding - industrial-grade, emotionally upholstered, lavender-scented scaffolding - to hide the truth from others and particularly the self.

Food? It’s not just “find, chew and swallow.” Nah. We’ve got 68 cuisines, 247 food-related industries, 7,852 kitchen gadgets, 327 ways to cook an egg, cultural seasonings, plating techniques revered like religious rites, and people who say, “I’m getting notes of leather whip and childhood trauma in this wine.”

Sweat and odors? We’ve got multi-dimensional grooming industries and rituals, anoint ourselves with perfumes like, “Solar Eclipse No. 9”, style our hair every way but natural. Perfumes, deodorants, colognes, and hair styling.

And we transform our nails into colored mini headlights.

Those excretions which all animals do? Not us…. We’ve built entire architectural sectors - bathrooms, toilets, plumbing, sewage systems - dedicated to pretending it doesn’t happen, and cultural taboos around discussion or display.

For sleep - effectively a collapse and reboot - we’ve engineered curated beds, blankets weighted with emotional support, schedules, routines and rituals, apps, and the delusion we will definitely go to sleep earlier tomorrow.

Sex. Right. No. It’s not just two consenting animals getting it on. We’ve concocted dating, romance, love, flowers, contraception, family planning, sexual privacy, pornography, modesty, lingerie, marriage, divorce and industries dedicated to mystifying something every squirrel (and a bird and bee) already understands.

We don’t just not starve or have shelter. We’ve got jobs, professions, offices, training, skills, resumes, politics, business casual, authority structures, economic systems, holiday bonuses and enough titles to fill a library.

We don’t just “play.” We’ve got sports, competition, games, puzzles, music, theater, visual arts, hobbies, social recreation, entertainment rituals, professional versions to watch, and 500 ways to move something in a designated area.

We don’t just protect ourselves with clothing. There are piercings, fashion, modesty, exhibitionism, seasonal, cultural and religious dress, jewelry, tattoos, makeup, wigs, uniforms, shoes that hurt but “complete the look” and enough fabric options to cover several planets.

And for the ultimate test – death? Instead of just ceasing to exist, we’ve created funerals, wakes, memorial services, embalming, cremation, body preservation, headstones, burials, graves, mausoleums, mourning attire and rituals, memorials, anniversaries, and whole ecosystems of practices around afterlife.

We take raw biological processes and disguise and glamorize them so we can pretend our body is an inconvenient roommate we manage with scented candles and a decorative curtain.

“We’re not animals,” insists the ego. “These aren’t needs. They’re selected lifestyle choices.” We have indulgences and creative outlets. We don’t smell. We don’t shed. We don’t have to ingest energy or excrete the processed energy forms. We don’t die. We don’t have to sleep. Everything of us is elective,

enhanced as we see fit. Our bodies don’t control and dictate. The ego is in charge.

We’ve airbrushed ourselves so much, we’ve lost sight of reality and think the mask is it.

Yet, beneath the perfumed layers, the exotic rituals aside, we’re still squishy, gooey, mortal animals. Honoring that is a kind of wisdom beyond the ego's reach.

Sure, we can let the ego have its run. On a leash. But mother earth’s wisdom, the wisdom of the animal - including the animal of us - governs.

Body to ego: Honor the leash I give you. If you want, you can use it as a mask.

But it’s not a crown.