The Toothache
Rachel woke up Saturday morning with throbbing toothache in her right bottom molar. It was so intense that her whole head hurt, but she knew there were important things to get done, so she decided she'd ignore the pain and make breakfast for her hungry kids. As she fried eggs and cooked bacon to order (Some like it crispy, some like it chewy) she would stop now and then to wince at the nagging ache in her jaw, but knowing she had duties to perform, she tried to brush it aside and concentrate on what was before her.
Rachel swallowed some pain relievers, took a shower and gently brushed her teeth. She used mouthwash that numbed the pain for a few minutes at a time, but inevitably, the pain returned with a vengeance and she found herself unable to concentrate on anything else.
By 2:00 pm she was in her recliner, a heating pad pressed against her face and the phone in her lap as she anxiously awaited a call back from the emergency dentist. Nothing else mattered to her at that point because the pain was so horrible she couldn't focus on anything past the throbbing ache that crept its way up the whole side of her face and seemingly into her brain.
The children fought. The refrigerator was empty, the dog whined to go outside, but she couldn't be bothered with any of that. The discomfort of others at that point, seemed insignificant to her. She had a toothache!
Her stomach growled with hunger, but she knew how bad it would hurt to eat, so she suffered through the rumbling in her belly rather than even try to find something her mouth could tolerate.
As she sat nursing her pain and hoping for some relief, her husband ran into the house bleeding profusely from his hand. He had cut himself on a power tool in the garage. "Can you bandage this for me?" he asked in a panic. "I might need stitches" He said.
But she was in no condition to drive him to the emergency room. She had no interest in bandaging his hand or stopping the bleeding. Her toothache was making it impossible for her to even care that he was also in pain.
So he drove himself to the ER and came home with ten stitches, only to find her still sitting in the recliner writhing in pain with the children running around the house like little mad-men, destroying everything in sight.
"What is your problem?" He wanted to know.
"My tooth really hurts." She answered, thinking that should be explanation enough.
"Everyone gets a toothache now and then!" The husband argued. "Why can't you just get over it already! Take something for the pain, go to the dentist! Get better, we need you!"
But the dentist couldn't see her on a Saturday and the pain medication wasn't helping. All she could focus on was her own pain. The pain and problems of everyone else seemed small and insignificant compared to the excruciating pain in her own body. Why couldn't they understand that? Why couldn't she get a break?
By the time Monday morning rolled around, her husband had had enough. He packed her into the car and drove her to the dentist who quickly found a tiny piece of dental floss had broken off between her tooth and gum, causing an infection and severe inflammation. Gently, the dentist took a long tweezer and pulled the tiny bit of floss loose. The relief she felt was almost immediate.
On the way home, Rachel looked over at her husband's bandaged up hand on the steering wheel and her heart sank. She realized how selfish she had been when he had asked for her help. In retrospect, it seemed her own pain couldn't have been worse than his, but at the time, her pain was so overwhelming she couldn't even consider that anyone else could be hurting. With her pain numbed and somewhat relieved, her sense of empathy came into focus enough for her to look at her husband and apologize for not being there for him.
"It's okay." He answered. "I understand that it's almost impossible to consider someone else's pain when you are hurting so badly that you can think of nothing else but finding relief for yourself."
And with that they drove home in silence, her swollen jaw and his bandaged hand a reminder to them both that sometimes in life, we have to focus on our own pain and path to healing before we can help anyone else with theirs.
The Mud Puddle
A guy was walking down the street, taking in all the sights and sounds the beautiful spring morning around him. Birds were chirping joyously, fluttering from one beautiful flowery dogwood branch to another welcoming the sunshine after days and days of heavy rain. The guy, we'll call him Chuck; Chuck was whistling a little ditty to himself that he'd heard before, but didn't know the words to. He thought about his day, his plans, the girl he loved as he walked, chin up through the sunlit morning on his way to make the most of such a promising day. Chuck was a hopeful kind of guy. He smiled a lot of the time, even if he didn't feel like smiling. Whenever someone did something rude or thoughtless that hurt his feelings, he was usually able to brush it off, remind himself "Everyone has bad days." And just move on, being his contented, unflappable self.
Chuck had no idea what was coming ahead of him though. If he had just taken a second to look away from the flowering dogwoods and stopped thinking about tomorrow and all the promise that lay ahead in it for him, he might have saved himself some messy trouble. But he didn't look down, not even for a second. So imagine his surprise when he took a step and fell, right foot-first into a deep puddle of mud that swallowed him up to his chin.
Suddenly, his morning of bliss became bleak. He found himself eye-level with the feet of passersby, people he had not even noticed were on the street with him just a few seconds before.
"Hey, can you help me?" He asked a pair of black pumps as they tromped hurriedly around the puddle.
"Sorry," The girl attached to them answered over her shoulder. "I'm running late. You can get out of there if you try hard enough! Just believe in yourself!" She offered as she stomped away.
Chuck struggled against the heavy weight of the mud pressing against his arms and legs and realized it was hard to even move. How the heck was he even going to get to the edge of the puddle, where he could reach the solid, dependable edge of the sidewalk to pull himself out? He struggled and struggled, and wore himself out trying to make it to the edge. He kept seeing feet stepping around him and his puddle, but trying to believe in himself, he didn't ask any of them for a hand.
Chuck ended up wallowing in that mud puddle for hours. Hours that felt like days, as he would work his way almost free and then somehow stumble and end up right back up to his neck again. Eventually there was even mud on his face, his eyelids almost cemented shut with it.
He spent some time fussing at himself for being stupid enough to walk right into a giant puddle of mud that was deep enough to engulf him. "What was I thinking?" He kept asking himself. "I must be an idiot!" He asserted. "I have to be the only person in the world who would find himself in a place like this!" For a while those negative thoughts spun out of control, all the while with his fighting and struggling to free himself from the mess he had gotten himself into.
Finally, too tired to keep fighting, Chuck decided he would just sit there in the mud puddle for a while. He took some time to get acquainted with how the cool, wet earth felt against his skin. He wondered about people who take mud-baths on purpose. He relaxed his arms and legs and let himself sink, still further into the soggy deep hole until the mud was covering his mouth. He breathed through his nose and thought about how nice it would be once someone came along and noticed him there and pulled him out. He thought about all the things he was going to do as soon as he was out of that mud puddle.
"I'm going to get coffee as soon as I get out of here!" he determined to himself. "I'm not even going to worry about how dirty I am and I'm not even going to care what anyone at Starbucks thinks of me when I walk there covered in mud. Sometimes people get dirty. It's life. They'll just have to deal with it."
But as the hours passed and the hurried feet continued to sidestep him, he started to lose hope. "What if no one notices me here?" He finally asked himself as the sun started to hide behind a hillside and the warm spring breeze started to turn to a chilly nip in the air. Suddenly and frantically he began to yell for help.
"Help! Help!" He yelled as more and more folks in their shiny shoes, running shoes, high heels and hiking boots avoided his puddle. None of them seemed to hear him, and the ones who did just told him "You can do it! Get yourself out!"
In quiet resignation, Chuck raised his arms one last time through the heavy weight of the mud as he reached over his head to wave his hands toward the heavens and ask "WHY ME?"
That was when he felt it. The small, cool tender shoot of a new leaf tickling the tip of his finger. At last, chuck did something he had not done since he fell into the puddle. He looked up.
Just above his head a strong sturdy branch from a very old dogwood tree reached out to him, it's budding leaves and tender flowers speckled with mud from his day of splashing and struggling to set himself free. Chuck found within himself one last surge of hope, one last burst of energy that gave him the strength to reach up and grab that branch. As he pulled himself from the puddle, he felt the murkiness trying to suck him back in, but in his tenacity he refused to give up and with all the strength he had, he pulled himself free.
As the sun continued to sink behind the horizon, Chuck crawled up onto that strong, sturdy old branch and propped his feet up with his hands behind his head and watched the day come to a close. The birds had gone silent, except for a few mocking birds who hollered loudly for their mates. The street was quiet, there were no more people coming and going, hurrying to meet deadlines and scurrying around big puddles like the one he had found himself trapped in all day. Coffee was the last thing on his mind. At last he was free from the puddle and from his new perspective, could see the world around him in a whole new way.
Sure, Chuck eventually climbed down from the tree and made his way back home to shower. He called his friends and told them what happened and they all said, "Wow, had I known, I would have happily helped you!"
But Chuck knew something they didn't. That sometimes when you fall into a mud puddle, you have to stay there and wallow for a while before you can find your way out.
Falling Down
Jon was late to class. It wasn't as if it were the first time he'd ever been late before, after all, in college he was often the last guy to sneak into the back of the classroom and take the last seat as the professor droned on and on about something he only listened to in order to keep his mind off other things. This time though, he was the professor, and he knew there was a classroom full of students waiting for him two floors up. He knew that if he didn't get there within the next 3 minutes, the students would disperse, deciding that the Ol' Prof had abandoned class for the day.
So Jon skipped the uncertain wait for the elevator and instead decided to leap up the stairs, two steps at a time to his waiting class on the second floor. He made it up the first flight of stairs, his heart beating fast in his chest, heaving for air and thinking to himself that he really needed to get in better shape. As he leaped up the steps, double-timing it to his next lecture, he thought of the walking trail on campus and chastised himself a little for not taking advantage of it more often. Losing himself in thought was a bad idea he soon discovered, as his numbing leg stretched one last time over the steps that would settle him finally on the landing just outside his classroom. He was already reaching for the door to the stairwell when his leg, tired and distracted, missed the step and he stumbled backwards all the way to the bottom of the second flight of stairs.
He lay there for a second or two in dumbfounded shock. "I fell" he said to himself in surprise.
Panic quickly arose in him as he looked around to see if anyone else was in the stairwell with him. To his relief, he was alone. No one had seem him fall. At least he wouldn't have to endure the same and embarrassment of anyone trying to help him up or ask if he was okay. No one could go and tell the story of how they saw him tumble backwards down a flight of stairs.
One crisis averted, he looked around him and noticed his briefcase had popped open upon impact and graded term papers were scattered on the landing and on the steps below him. He sat up and sighed heavily. "Now what do I do?" he asked himself. "By the time I pick up all these papers and get to class, all my students will be gone." So rather than get to work picking up the papers, he scooted himself against the wall and sat there, staring at the aftermath of his flawed plan.
Eventually, he heard the stairwell door open below him and fast steady steps making their way in his direction. He quickly assessed the situation, realizing that whomever was coming would likely look at this mess and believe he had lost his mind if they saw him sitting there inactive among the scattered papers, and started to scramble furiously to pick them up, stuffing them back into his briefcase haphazardly.
"Oh no!" he heard a kind voice say. "You dropped your briefcase?"
He looked up and grinned dubiously at the kind face smiling down at him.
"Yeah, he said." I'm so clumsy sometimes!"
"Let me help you," she offered, and before he could refuse she had started to pick up the papers and neatly stack them together before handing them to him.
"Thanks" he said sheepishly.
"Not at all," She offered. "You know, these stairwells are bad luck for me too."
"Really?" He asked, interest piqued.
"Yeah, the other day I was running late and fell down four steps trying to get to class on time. Ended up being late anyway." She laughed.
He chuckled a little too. "Yeah, that must have really sucked."
"Well, I hope your day gets better." She said kindly as she made her way steadily up the steps to the second floor.
"Thanks," He answered. "I think it just got a little better already." He found comfort in knowing he wasn't the first person to fall down those steps in a hurry to his next appointed duty.
Jon took a deep breath and straightened his tie as he took stock of his body. Was anything hurt? No, he didn't think so...Nothing but his pride anyway. Then he steadily made it up the stairs just to see if there were any students still waiting.
He entered the classroom, still red-faced and flustered to find three students sitting patiently,two of them tapping on their iPhones, seemingly oblivious to the fact that all the other students had left; the third smiled back at him from her seat as she settled in and pulled out her notebook. It was the girl from the stairwell who helped him pick up his scattered mess.
He nodded at her with a grin as he opened his own notes and began to lecture about the human nature of decision making. The activating event, the underlying belief systems, and the consequent choices we all make based on our belief systems.
And as he spoke to the nearly-empty classroom with only one student who listened with rapt attention, he realized, he should have just waited for the elevator.
