Colgate Max Fresh. That is my favorite toothpaste. It’s got those suspended-in-gel mint strips so my mouth feels fresh long after its use. I think toothpaste technology and range of product availability, along with the price, have changed dramatically in the last years. There are now whitening, bad breath and tartar control, cavity prevention, vegan, mint, gel, paste, and sensitivity options that I don’t remember from childhood. And the price!!! But the one thing that hasn’t changed is that toothpaste still comes in a tube. Big, small, standing upright, twist off or pop- up lids, but no matter the product or type of lid, it has most always remained a tube we squeeze. We’ve all been there: squeezing too hard so it comes out in a glob, congealing around the edge so your next squeeze requires some muscle, or the never -ending question about when to throw out the tube and how much paste you are willing to part with.
Let’s Think About Toothpaste for a Moment
Now you may not have signed up for a blog about toothpaste. Its so menial given the amount of data our brains are asked to process in a day. But let’s for the sake of all those hard-working dentists out there, just really think about toothpaste for a minute. The one thing we all know about toothpaste is that once it is out of the tube, there is no way anyone has been able to get it back in. Toothpaste is a one directional product. And this is why I think toothpaste is important: Life is also a one-way product. We are all flowing like toothpaste oozing along, without realizing that this motion forward is one way only. Within this flow you may experience glorious events like birthdays, weddings, birth of children or grandchildren. Or they may be traumatic such as motor vehicle crashes, injury, disease, death, or psychological distress. Some of these life events may be so small that they are almost imperceptible (and maybe less memorable), and some so big that they hit- you -in -the -face and are so easily conjured you will never forget them as long as you live.
And no matter what occurs in our lives, we often have a way we think that our life will turn out. Each of our life events gets placed into that narrative. If something happens in our lives, we can process it best depending on what we think is supposed to happen. If it’s a good thing, we usually think it is supposed to happen and therefore it’s easier to understand and file it under “reasonable expectation”. If it is a more traumatic or difficult event, or further away from our expectations, it’s harder to process because it is harder to fit it into our “what is supposed happen” story. It’s more likely to be filed under “WTF?”. The further away from our expectations a life event is, the harder it is to make it fit into our story. That may be because the story isn’t flexible enough or designed to account for all of our change. You might be starting to think about toothpaste again. Maybe not.
Life Events Change Us
The thing of it is, that no matter what the life event is, big or small, traumatic or jubilant, whether we are expecting them or not, they are constantly changing us whether we like it or not. I am different than I was yesterday because of what happened to me today. There is no way we can go back. Life is pushing us along, oozing us forward in one direction and one direction only. We have become the toothpaste. Sometimes life squeezes us so hard and we get pushed in one direction faster than anticipated, or sometimes life requires a bit more work to feel we are moving ahead. Maybe we are spilling over things we never dreamed we would even touch. Other times it feels effortless and we just flow.
The analogy is that life may give us the illusion that we are the same day after day, but the micro events are creating changes we may not see immediately and require perspective to see their effects. Other times we may be faced with a crisis and we want desperately to get back to the way things were before it happened. But eventually we figure out that our lives have changed forever because of it. The point is, it’s all a flow and whether we see it immediately or we require processing time, we are all moving, oozing, flowing, seeping, gushing, bubbling, leaking, or spurting forward with each day, hour, minute of our lives.
Going With the Flow
Now toothpaste isn’t as important as all that. But we know a few things: as we live each day, through life events, big or small, we can never go back to the way we were even yesterday. We cannot flow backwards, and we all know the frustration of trying to get back into our proverbial tube. The best we can do is to simply go with the flow, to where life takes us and even if it gets messy sometimes, we can wipe ourselves off, clean ourselves up and try to flow with greater ease tomorrow. We can meet each day brighter, cleaner, more refreshed, and with more confidence knowing we are moving forward.
Next time you go brush your teeth, remember that you are part of the flow of the universe, going in one way, and although some life events will really squeeze you, there is always a new day and a new you around the corner tomorrow.
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