That's Crazy!

Oh, come on! Nobody smiles when they are having a root canal. That’s crazy. That’s what the endodontist said when he noticed me smiling through the endless metal and rubber paraphernalia stuck into my wide-open mouth. Of course I was already numbed from my jaw to my right ear, but he was moving along efficiently and skillfully with all those bad-movie tools of his.

“You are crazy,” Dr. Christensen said, with a smile behind his blue surgical mask.

Dr. Christensen is about six feet, six inches tall, is my guess, young and from Utah. You can tell he’s not from the east coast; he has that easy, unforced friendliness of a westerner.

Please do not misunderstand. The night before I was anxious as a cow in the slaughter slot thinking about the procedure. I’ve had one root canal with a different endodontist and that was no picnic at the beach, I can tell you.

This was completely different. Not only was Dr. Christensen really good at his job, but, also, I was different. I lay flat back in the chair thinking about my younger brother who continues to fight cancer, thinking about all the truly nasty things that have been done to him in order to save his life.

 I was thinking, too, about my friend whom I would be visiting in the afternoon. His body carries physical pain in his joints as consistently as I carry my pocketbook. Only he can’t put it down. I was praying that I would be able to relieve his suffering even the littlest bit; I was talking to God and talking to my friend in my mind while Dr. Christensen did his probing and drilling and cleansing.

And suddenly, I was overwhelmed with gratitude that this dodgy tooth of mine could be fixed: not moderated, not medicated and managed, but fixed. Compared to what these two men are going through, having a root canal is a joke.

 And so, with my mouth open like a yawning hippopotamus and stuffed with metal props, drills and rubber protectors, I smiled.

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Welcome this week to readers from Singapore, Serbia, Thailand, Jordan, Macau and Taiwan. Thank you for reading Life Opening Up. I am wondering how all of you from other countries discover this blog? Through a friend? Through the topic labels?  I would very much like to hear from you. However you discover it, I am so happy that you find time to read it.

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 To those of you in Ukraine, we pray for you still, for a stable, independent government. We pray for an end to the killing in Syria and Palestine and Israel and we pray for all the families of those who were senselessly killed in the blasting of Malaysian Airlines MH17.

Readers Raise Some Good Questions

 Readers have asked some interesting questions about the most recent Life Opening Up blog, Juicing Our Dramas.

One of you wondered why we do this? Why do we tell and retell our victim stories and tragedies? She speculated: Is there some underlying cause for our needing to repeat our dramas to whoever will listen?

Good question.

I would suggest that there is. We may be venting, venting, venting, and, at the same time, looking for attention and/or a way, perhaps, to appear more interesting. We can be expressing learned behavior that we picked up from a parent, or unconsciously striving to fill a hole leftover from an attention-deprived childhood. 

I’m a middle child who grew up with a smart, twenty-two months older sister and then, three years later, along came the much-longed for boy, a brother, who, in our patriarchal family, could basically do no wrong. The classic middle child syndrome contains a plea to be noticed.  (Ergo: a blog?)

My life became packed full of drama stories during my late thirties and early forties. I was so accustomed to the tensions that, as step by step, I began to gather myself together, I remember wondering:  If I get my life under control will I still be interesting? What will I talk about if there is an absence of crisis in my life?

One reader wrote that “your friends will like it” if you stop bombarding them with your dramas and she is right.

Another reader went further, saying that he knew he was guilty of this habit to some degree, but added that he had a friend who was dining out on her drama stories and driving everyone crazy. Could he approach this problem with the annoying person? Could he let her know?

It is not easy to give unsolicited feedback to anyone, even a friend, without causing offense. It depends so much on the nature of your relationship to that person. Does the other person know you care about him/her? Does the other person trust you? Have you participated in any inter-personal sharing with this person in the past?

Questions like the above can help us decide whether or not to take this potentially difficult path. Some people are more open to personal feedback than others, that is certain, and if you suspect that all that would come of such a discussion is a solid wall of defense and a wrecked friendship, then it’s probably not worth it.

 On the other hand, others can be touched that you cared enough about them to risk sharing your concern.

My rule is: trust your instinct. And, of course, our primary goal is to become aware of our own behavior patterns with friendly curiosity—no criticism--and to allow that awareness to heal us. Maybe doing just that will help others to heal as well.

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Welcome this week to new readers from Serbia, Romania and Senegal! I am honored that you read Life Opening Up and I hope you will again.  Many thanks to all of you from other countries and especially those of you in the USA for reading this blog!