Column: Something About Nothing, by Julie Seedorf

Have you ever had one of those light-bulb moments, one of those moments where something that you have taken for granted all along just pops out at you and you say wow? It happens when you least expect it and for no reason that you can figure out.

That happened to me this past week. The subject of teeth has been on my mind. I think it is probably time I visit my dentist, and I have a dentist phobia. I imagine it comes back to the time in eighth grade when I had my two front teeth knocked out, and I had to spend a lot of time in the dentist office. Back in those days my dentist was a little or a lot rough, and it was not an experience that I ever wanted to happen again. So now, even in my wisdom years, I have a fear of the dentist although I think things have improved in the pain department.

My grandson had lost a bottom tooth somewhere around Easter. This time when we visited them he was showing me that he had lost another tooth, but the tooth that he had lost earlier had grown in.

I have went through many Tooth Fairy moments with my kids. I remember my Tooth Fairy moments as a child. But I have never experienced the light-bulb moment that I did that day. All of sudden I was in awe of what our bodies can do. How neat is it that when you are a kid and you lose your baby teeth, new teeth grow back in. How cool is that design that we are given in our bodies.

I started wondering how that happened. A family member told me that when they were in Washington, D.C., they visited an exhibit that had a skull of a child, and it also showed how the teeth are hidden in the jaw ready to pop out when the first teeth are lost. What a design! When you think about it, what a gift our bodies are with their healing properties.

I broke my leg, and it healed. Cuts and sores heal, and teeth, when you are young, grow back.

I have no idea why this was such a light-bulb moment. It is something I have always known and taken for granted and perhaps because I am this age, I was struck by how wonderful the healing properties of a body are.

Of course then I wondered why it didn’t get carried a little further and make the bodies keep regenerating teeth so we didn’t need to have false teeth when we get older. Wouldn’t that be awesome if we could always regenerate teeth. Maybe that is a question for the afterlife.

Maybe the light-bulb moment was given to me so that I could see the magnificence of life. Maybe the light-bulb moment was given to me so I could appreciate the unique healing properties of our bodies. I realized I don’t always take good care of that which was given to me.

I don’t always eat healthy. I don’t always exercise. I don’t always practice patience and calm especially when it comes to something on my body needing to heal. It is hard to slow down and let the healing process take place. I always think I can’t rest, I can’t take the time to let what is supposed to happen naturally happen, and because I don’t allow that many times things do not heal as they should.

Not only does the healing process have to happen in our body at times, but it also has to happen in our minds. We need the time for our minds to rejuvenate from whatever stresses are happening in our lives.

We are not good at that in our busy world. We don’t turn off the noise or the work. We somehow have the idea if we take the time to rest it means we are lazy.

So those teeth gave a me a moment that I hope I remember, a moment to be thankful for the healing properties in our bodies, a moment to realize that we were given the gift of our bodies and we need to take the time to take care of them so they can heal.

“Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.” — Jim Rohn

“The body too has its rights; and it will have them: they cannot be trampled on without peril. The body ought to be the soul’s best friend. Many good men however have neglected to make it such: so it has become a fiend and has plagued them.” — Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

 

Wells resident Julie Seedorf’s column appears every Monday. Send email to her at thecolumn@bevcomm.net.