Cheewwww  32…. Times!

When i was a kid , my aunt, my grandma would always scold me for eating fast. They would loose their patience with me sometime. I would almost always obey them but i never remembered to imbibe their teachings into my life permanently. I never put my mind there , never questioned them because i was a shy introvert kid. So, I would follow their directions as long as they were in front of me. Once they were out of sight,  I would fall back into my comfort zone, in this case eating fast.

“This is an antibiotic and other one is a pain killer. Take it as a SOS if the pain wakes you up at night. ” Echo of my dentist bought me back from the flash back into the present. 

I had just undergone a painless dental surgery, a titanium implant into the second molar teeth. Though painless, thanks to the docs with his rich experience of years in army,  I was suffering from a huge discomfort of drilling in the jaw bone for removal of cyst and then the pressure of bone augmentation. 

With a numb tongue and cheek  and not sounding normal, i asked my dentist,” Why did i get this infection in spite of the RCT 3 years back? What could have done to avoid it? “

His wisdom and experience began to flow. He said 

“Look eating as an action in itself is cleansing of tooth. Our teeth have a beautiful structure. When you top molar moves onto the lower molar it grinds the food into the finer particle which then moves over your teeth and gum, effectively cleaning it as slides down. The food between the gum and the tongue serves a  cushion massaging the gums .  When we don’t chew them properly ( read it as chewwwing thirrttty-ttwooo times…) We don’t get enough massage to strengthen the gum nor enough cleansing happens.”

“Secondly, we eat processed, cooked food which sticks between our teeth where it shouldn’t leading to a decay of the tooth. Nature wanted us to eat raw food with fiber and nutrients which we humans don’t. Animals still do and they don’t have any dentals issue their entire life mostly. Raw food generally doesn’t stick and the fibres in them give the much needed massage. Not only they eat raw,  they cuddle or grind  what they eat until it’s flows like a juice. Have you ever done that ? Brushing does help a bit but not enough for our oral health. It can’t substitute for for your proper chewing habit or the food we eat. So now you know why you had that infection. “

40 grand down, with an artificial titanium fixture trying to emulate natural teeth another thought flashe. On the black lotus app where one of the act is to eat mindfully by taking , lets say a Raisen to chewing along with counting of upto 2 minutes which leads to chewing appx. 30 + times. I did it to get a tick on the app to score a point but I didn’t make it a habit. I haven’t changed I am still about making a point , a score. I won the battle but lost the war. 

While we may not have the wisdom to see how wise our grandparents were when they insisted on sitting with our back straight, applying oil and taking sun bath, applying smelly seasme oil on the hairs, preferring to walk everyday in sunlight of the dawn hours, Eating Neem, til and gud on Sankranti, praying everyday, sleeping early and waking up early, etc.etc. lets not discard some of these old, wiser way just because either they can’t explain why or we don’t see the depth of why. Follow these eternal truths wrapped as unexplained way of life.  Otherwise, you will gain the wisdom after spending 40+ grand and the loos of a tooth, like I did and we may not live to make enough loss and pain to gain the wisdom behind all these old wise ways.

My wife peeked from behind and read the last para… She gave a teasing, sarcastic laugh mixed with care and concern for me and my toothache and said ” Look who is writing about sleeping early at 10:30 in the night. You won’t change, uh?”

I reacted, “I don’t want to wait for tomorrow to loose the  thoughts, I want to share. ” 

“Just the same way everyone will find a reason to stick to their habits and not change. Others may or may not, but are you changing?” She said with that smile to die for. 

I thought about it, she is right about me not changing with enough intensity and permanently. Thats what I felt when I wrote about scoring a point on #blacklotus app and not making chewing a habit, a permanent one.

And I had this facepalm moment 🤔🤐. Wife is always ✅. 

40 grand down, with an artificial titanium fixture trying to emulate natural teeth, I now have the wisdom to not deliberate too much into the logic ( like I don’t have to wait until I know why to count for 2 minutes while chewing. ) and to make the change permanant (for e.g. chewing for 2 minutes everytime).  Its not about how much we know or learn, it about how much we absorb and make it a second nature.   

Do you too find yourself

Winning the battle and loosing the war? If not, then what and how do you do it differently?

I am 45 + plus , hoping to change and build habits from now on, What is that one thing that you have changed, for good in the last 5 years?.. (and please don’t mention your age, I don’t want to feel old and late.)

I Hope you are on BL app (paid version preferably, you will know why once you are on it.), the grandpa of wisdom, Swamiji is guiding us there. And most of the time questions and logic don’t arise with him  because of his explanation and our devotion, a great starting point for us lesser mortals.