Realizations and Ruminations….

I had a tooth pulled today.

I know that isn’t a monumental thing.  People have orthodontic procedures done all day every day.  As far as ‘radical’ procedures, extraction of a tooth isn’t exactly up there on the list.

It made me realize something, and that something is this.

Sometimes, you don’t have good options.  Sometimes, through genetics, bad luck, or simple neglect, you are left with a situation to which there exist no workable answers.  My choices today were as follows: Pay a manageable sum for a tooth extraction, or pay a reduced-but-still-insane sum to have a root canal, a tooth build-up, a crown, and several other doodads to keep the tooth in place.  I had to pay at the time of the procedure, and there is no way we could swing that.  We could barely afford the extraction, cheap as it was.

So I’m here, staring down the barrel of either dealing with an increasingly rotting tooth and the pain that accompanies it, or just taking the extraction because it’s all I can afford right now and if I leave the tooth in there is a real chance of septic shock should it decay to the point where it enters my blood.  I could die, and people do, from teeth rotting in their faces for too long.  It’s less common in America, but sadly still a thing in less developed countries.

No amount of wishful thinking, prayers, or denial would fix my tooth.  It had to go, and it was the only realistic option to resolve the situation.  It was still a bad choice.  It was still a permanent problem that I’ve saddled myself with for the rest of my life.  If the extraction was any indicator, however, I did the best that I could with what I had available.  The tooth was already horribly infected, and it could’ve back-fired tremendously had I waited any longer.

That brings me to how this relates to writing and life in general.  Sometimes, in order to advance in our lives or our careers, we have to make the best of a bad situation, knowing that we are obtaining a new set of problems in exchange for our old ones.  It’s not that what we have done before may have been wrong, or that what we are doing is ineffective.  It may simply be that circumstances have snowballed out of our control and we are now left to face the reality in front of us.

I think it’s important to realize that.  It’s hard to be pragmatic about our own lives; I don’t get that tooth back.  I can’t go to the store and get ‘tooth-b-here’ and grow it back overnight.  It’s gone.  Until they screw tight the cremation jar, that’s it.  I am sans tooth.  And it will have further complications.  I need to get bridges or an implant, both of which are expensive.  I’ve not ducked out on expensive and extensive dental procedures.  All I’ve done is kick that can down the road.

But I’m not in pain.  I’m no longer in danger of serious complications.  I’m no longer losing days and nights to my situation.  I can think more clearly than I have in a week and some change.  I’m no longer constantly worried about bumping the tooth wrong, having to floss too hard, or any number of other inane things I had to juggle just to keep my face from catching fire with pain.

Sometimes, the best we can do is try and navigate the situation that we are in.  Yes, it has its own costs.  And no, you shouldn’t just default to the most obvious solution immediately rather than trying to find the best one.  Every now and then, however, we just have to make sure that we make a decision, good or bad, to see us to the next one.

It’s not perfect, but neither are we.

Toothfully,
Justin