What to do when nothing is wrong

It is a question people rarely dare to ask, because it hardly sounds like one. Your face is fine. Nothing bothers you. And yet you wonder whether you should be doing something.

The answer is yes — but not what you imagine.

What you should above all not do

Go looking for a problem.

This is what happens to many people who start taking an interest in the subject without any real need: they read, they learn to spot things, and they end up seeing flaws on their own face that did not bother them the week before.

A face that is doing well has nothing to correct. Correcting it anyway is the surest way to create the very problem you went looking for.

What is worth doing, even when all is well

Only two things.

Do no harm. This is the greater part of the work, and it consists in not doing: not scrubbing, not stripping, not piling on, not switching every three months. Almost every face damaged by skincare was damaged by excess of zeal, never by neglect.

Protect yourself from the sun. It is the one gesture whose benefit is beyond dispute, at every age and for everyone.

Everything else can wait.

Why the question still comes up

Because a young or healthy face compensates for everything — and it compensates so well that it says nothing.

Today, you could be heading in a direction that does not suit you, with no sign to warn you. Nothing will show for years. Then, one day, the compensation runs out, and the day itself gets the blame for what belonged to the years before.

That is why the question deserves to be asked now, while all is well: it is the only moment when the answer can still act on a great deal of time.

What there really is to know

Not what you should add, but what you should avoid.

Every face follows a logic, and that logic says what costs it. There are common gestures, recommended everywhere, that run exactly counter to certain natures — regular stripping for a thrifty skin, systematic soothing for a nature that needs momentum.

Done once, they do nothing. Done for ten years, they do a great deal.

The only useful gesture today

Knowing which direction you are heading. It is information, not a routine; it is obtained once and it does not expire.

It cannot be read in the mirror, where everything looks fine precisely because the compensation is working. It is read from the beginning — and it is probably the only thing worth doing on the day you have no problem at all.