Friday, February 22, 2013

Back to Natural

I preach to everyone I meet about the benefits of a more natural life.  The people who know me best say I'm a hippie, sometimes it's a compliment, sometimes it's a joke and I think sometimes they mean it as an insult.  I'm okay with being a 'hippie'.  I try to make decisions that will help the environment, my family, my health and my pocketbook.  Lately, though, I feel like maybe I'm conforming.  I'm not a conformist, I have pretty much always been 'duifferent' even if it was only slightly.  I'm turning 30 this year.  I have a grown-up, middle management job.  I have a husband, a kid and a couple dogs.  All of this is way to adult for me.  I'd rather be living in a yurt in the middle of a vineyard living off the grid, but I'm in rural America living the American Dream.  Because of all this, I'm a little bit stuck in a very important decision:  Should I let my hair go gray naturally or should I continue to dye it because I don't want to be that grown up?

I want to be natural, right?  So if my natural hair color is fading to gray, shouldn't I let it go?  On the other hand, there are hair dyes out there that claim to be more 'natural'.  I don't believe most of these products are actually natural.  I realize it's a marketing scheme to make us think we are doing something better for ourselves and for the environment.  I have been using baking soda and vinegar to cleanse my hair on and off for a couple years.  The times that I stop using them and start using some kind of shampoo and conditioner again is when I'm coloring my hair.  Baking soda will wash everything, including the color from my hair.  Vinegar is used to set colors when you dye things like clothes, it will do the same for hair color, but the baking soda counters it and the result is a waste of money on hair dye.

All of this is vanity, of course.  A lame attempt to stop the process of growing up.  I'd like to know what I know now and go back in time and do things again.  Not so I can do things differently, the decisions I've made make me who I am today, but so I can enjoy things I took for granted over time.  God is giving me this gray hair, maybe I should just accept it as a gift and be thankful I have the hair I have.  Besides, if I truly want to be more natural, using the baking soda and vinegar are better for my body and for the environment, but that conformist part of me kicks in when I look in the mirror and see a fresh gray root on my head.  I have threatened to just put silver highlights in my hair so that I can go gray on my own terms.  My mother and I have a trip to the beauty supply store planned for tomorrow, I haven't made any decision yet.  I guess we will just have to wait and see what happens...

How are you coping with getting older and the physical things that come along with it?