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| Before. |
Louis Shalako
They say change happens in an instant. I’m sure that’s
true in many cases, but in my experience, really profound changes take a little
more time.
A case in point happened just the other day.
After
years of wrestling with the possibility, I had finally gotten fed up, and that
part might have happened in an instant. Picking up the phone and making a
dental appointment, that was a tipping point for sure.
It was one, single, simple and discrete action.
The actual process of change, both physical and
mental, takes a little longer. The first appointment is an assessment. Then you
go back a couple of weeks later and get the first work done.
And at some point they hold a mirror up in front of
your face. You get to see the teeth that you might have had all along, if only
you hadn’t gotten a couple of them chipped in youthful misadventures…the teeth
that you might have had if only you had found the damned guts ten or fifteen or
twenty years ago. The teeth that you might have had if only you didn’t hate
them for so long, so you neglected and even abused them.
It’s a kind of revelation, I guess.
That part happens in an instant.
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| One picture's good for about a thousand words. |
All the possibilities that you missed, will now run
through your mind. That part might take a little longer, because there sure
were plenty of them. There must have been a lot of missed opportunities there.
And obviously I was too dumb to see it.
Every so often I go in the bathroom and have a look at
them damned fine choppers in the mirror. The average person might take their
teeth for granted.
It’s like a dream come true for me. What it is, in
fact, is one more goal accomplished.
Getting those teeth fixed (most likely getting a whole
bunch pulled so that I could get dentures) was one of my New Year’s
resolutions, as far as I can recall. At that time it was an easy resolution to
make. The funny thing is that it happened. What’s really strange is that some
other person, some other people, also helped out there to make that happen.
I could speculate endlessly, but that part will always
be a bit of a mystery to me.
All the guy would say was that he was paying it forward.
***
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| A happy camper. |
This one minor change of physical appearance might
take a bit of getting used to. In a sense I am a whole new guy.
It also opens up a lot of new possibilities.
That seemed to happen pretty quickly, but of course
I’d been thinking about it for years.
Every so often I could probably use a good kick in the
ass.
We've got a ways to go in our own personal makeover, which affects our own personal algorithm.
END
Our Billion Dollar Giveaway is still on.
