the currency💰 of our labors
Menial labors and the laborers who perform them hold enormous value in our lives. After all, Martin Luther King Jr. went to Memphis in support of sanitation workers fighting for dignity, fair wages, and safer working conditions.
Who we become emerges from the accumulation of our life’s labors and the choices we make over time.
And some of the most consequential are small labors of love: a phone call to a loved one, a handwritten note, a home cooked meal, curling up with a good book.
Measured against our penchant for labor-saving convenience, none of these are a waste. They are the very labors that sustain us. The same case can be made for our skin.
Our bodies represent a profound biological reality we cannot obviate—and neither can we avoid the skin that covers them.
Some of us are still walking around with an outdated understanding of skin. It’s not simply our covering. It is a highly active, life-sustaining organ engaged in relentless, synchronized labor on our behalf 24/7.
Its outermost layer continually renews itself while maintaining a remarkably effective seal that keeps water in and much of the outside world out.
As late-summer air begins to dry and pollen spikes, that border becomes even more important. Skin's immune sentinels identify potential threats and coordinate responses to protect us.
Researchers estimate that our skin contains nearly twice as many T cells as circulated in our blood. Keratinocytes—the predominant cells of our epidermis—also detect microbial signals and help orchestrate immune defenses.
And emerging research suggests that caring for our skin barrier may matter beyond its surface. In a small UCSF study of older adults, twice-daily use of a barrier-repair moisturizer for 30 days was associated with significantly lower levels of three inflammatory cytokines in the bloodstream.
So caring for the outside may influence what happens inside.
It’s a compelling reason moisturizing our bodies should not be dismissed. Supplying skin with compatible lipids like nutrient-rich biomimetic carrier oils helps support the barrier doing this extraordinary work.
It is a small labor in return for an enormous one.
When the bill eventually comes due for the measure of our labors, will they have purchased what we claim matters most? The values we hold, the people we love, these bodies that move us through this life…
To care for our skin is one small act of care and resilience—deliberate work that honors the profound labor that keeps us whole.
May you be enriched by all of your labors, big and small.♥️
