thank you sir, may I have another?

As humans, it is part of our nature to try to avoid things that hurt, and to seek out things that feel good.  Lab rat behavior confirms that we aren't the only species that operate on this principle.  Pain recognition is a warning system that our bodies have evolved to tell us things like, "don't touch that hot stove"  when receiving a burn, or "those berries aren't good for you" when you feel sick after eating them.  I would say we are 'hard-wired' to avoid pain, but actually...we aren't.

We are 'wired' with a nervous system to detect pain.  But the interpretation of said stimulus is largely up to the software that is our brain.  Our brains choose to interpret the signal as something unpleasant - or not.  Sometimes the signal is interrupted between the nervous system and the brain, and never gets acknowledged or interpreted (ever take an opiate-based pain pill?  It blocks the signal.  Incredible stuff.).  Sometimes, an individual can choose to observe the stimulus from a detached position and decide to interpret it as something other than unpleasant, even choosing to derive pleasure from something others interpret as pain.  Hence, masochism.

Obviously, this system can serve us well and help us avoid damaging our bodies unnecessarily.  But when pain is necessary, does it always serve us to let our lower, autonomic self drive the bus down our typical path of pain avoidance?

A good analogy is dentistry, which is what I am facing today.  Nobody (well not *many* people anyway) actually enjoys it. We all know we have to do it, or else pay the consequences later - bad teeth, less-than-stellar smiles, pain from cavities.  So even though we KNOW it's going to be unpleasant - loud drilling, expense, shots, numbing, pulling, and sometimes even worse...we go anyway.  We dread it, we may put it off, drag our feet, but ultimately, we go.  Most of us, that is.  I do have a number of (adult) friends who have practically made a career out of dentistry avoidance because of the sheer unpleasantness, and for whom it is actually quite traumatic to go when it is time.  For them, 'time' to go is defined by when the pain of NOT going outweighs their fear of the potential pain and discomfort they are going to experience in The Chair.  And I guess that's what it comes down to for each of us, every day, when deciding exactly how much pain (of any kind) we are willing to tolerate.

I used to be one of those dentistry-avoidance people.  I remember as a child fearing the semi-annual visits to Dr. Shaw, the family dentist.  I'm pretty sure Nurse Ratched was his dental technician, and that she dreamed at night of carving up young people's gums with sharp instruments.  (And lived her dream daily, especially when I was in The Chair.)  As a young adult, there were many years that for both financial and anxiety-related reasons, I did not sit in The Chair.  But eventually, my inferior enamel and knowledge that I needed to do the maintenance now or pay the piper later kicked in, and I begrudgingly made the necessary appointment and faced the music (of the drill).  I was always proud of myself for doing this, knowing how much I dreaded it and how much anxiety novocaine shots used to give me as a child.  (I would literally have nightmares about them - sometimes having near-panic symptoms on my way to the office, in the backseat of my parents car with a runaway heartbeat and shallow breathing, panting like a dog.)

These people that choose not to go as adults for anxiety reasons are basically choosing comfort and the risk of the unknown vs. the known pain of The Chair.  They are also probably demonizing the dentist more than necessary.  He's not really a sadist, he's just there to keep your teeth healthy.  They are choosing to allow their brain to interpret all of those pain signals as threatening and worth avoiding at all costs.  I would call this a low pain threshold, mixed in with some unchecked level of extreme anxiety.  If you examine other areas of their life, I would gamble that you'll see conflict- or pain-avoidant behavior in other areas too.  It may even manifest as passive-aggressive behavior, where they avoid confrontation of any sort (which their anxious brain interprets as "danger! danger! run!"), and instead express their dissatisfaction by simply removing themselves from the situation and grumbling under their breath, or 'paying back' the person they have a problem with in some less obvious way.  (I experienced many paybacks from passive-aggressive husbands - yes, plural - who couldn't handle my up-front way of dealing with confrontation.  Basically, I would confront them with some important but possibly painful  topic, and they would squirm and evade and deny, but eventually would pay me back for that perceived humiliation (pain) by cheating on me or disrespecting me on some other level to make them feel vindicated and like they got 'even'.  It's extremely cowardly.)

Today, I have chosen to face The Chair voluntarily for a cosmetic improvement.  I have tetracycline staining on my two front teeth - I have had this my whole life.  I looked like a 2-pack a day smoker by the time I was 10.  My parents, recognizing my embarrassment and reluctance to smile because of it, had Dr. Shaw apply topical bonding to those teeth to cover the worst of the staining.  It did the trick for many years, and I all but forgot about the self-conscious smile I had in elementary school.  Some years ago, a dentist brought it to my attention that the bonding and my teeth in general were less than Chiclet white (the standard in Miami, where I was living at the time), and why didn't I do something about it?  Sounded like a good idea, that bonding had been applied and re-applied over the years and wasn't holding so well any more anyway.  So I invested in two veneers.  And I do mean invest.  Since it was a cosmetic application, insurance doesn't help much. But I felt it was worth it.  I do work in a customer-facing role, and smiling can be a big part of my job sometimes, as I've been told I look too intimidating when I'm *not* smiling.  So this Miami dentist injected me with copious amount of Novocaine (imagine getting multiple shots right above your two front teeth. Yeah.), ground down my front two teeth to little nubs, made a temp veneer which I wore for a week, then removed it and put the permanent veneers on.  When I say 'veneer', I'm sure many of you are picturing a thin coating of enamel, perfectly translucent and molded to the exact shape my original teeth had been (which quite frankly, I liked - it was the original color I had an issue with).  That is the basic idea behind veneers.  What I received instead was more of a crown.  Opaque, not-well-matched to my other teeth, larger-than-before protuberances that refused to let my lips close normally, turning me into a bad Bugs Bunny imitation.  I cried for DAYS before mustering up the nerve to return to the dentist and inform him that I was not at all happy about what he did to my smile, which was now threatening to not just strike, but completely run away, never to return.

As has been the sad experience with several other dentists in my past, even though I approached the situation carefully, calmly, and professionally, his ego took charge and reacted negatively.  I had made the appointment, telling the receptionist I wanted to discuss the veneers with the dentist.  I calmly informed him that the color match DIDN'T (match), and that if he reviewed my 'before' pictures, I was most certainly NOT buck-toothed prior to the veneering process.  I showed him how my lips no longer closed normally while at rest, and how unsettling and unattractive this was for me.  He acted put-out and exasperated.  As if I was just being an unreasonable child, after paying thousands (ok, maybe hundreds) for his services, I had no right not to LOVE the result I had received.

His 'solution' was basically to shave down the profile of the most offending veneer (the left one) and reprimand me.  Over what, I have no idea, but I felt reprimanded.  Red-faced and upset, I left his office, still unsatisfied.  A few short weeks later, that veneer cracked - while I was in California, no less.  I had to see Dr. Ego one more time to allow him to GLUE the cracked corner back together.  I was once again chastised (surely I had been chewing on rocks or somesuch), so this time I left, never to return.  Put him on the pile with Dr. Shaw, whose ego and shitty chairside manner of thinly disguised misogyny also eventually chased me out of his practice.  

Cut to 5 years later, I'm living in Jacksonville, still fighting my way out of a divorce, recovering from a recently broken heart, and on a MAJOR self-improvement kick.  I have stopped accepting "good enough" from myself and everybody around me.  My body hurts, but I still work out about 5-6 days a week.  I choose the pain over the alternative - staying the same, unhappy, overweight JC I had been for years.  I ended my last (non) relationship because it was not as fulfilling to my heart as I know I needed it to be and deserve, even though the pain of doing it was SO intolerable that I had to ply myself with alcohol (never a good tactic, by the way) just to work up the nerve to get myself there to do it.  But I did it.  I pulled the rug out from under my own feet, causing my heart so much pain.  That was exactly one month ago today.  And here I am, recovering from that pain, now voluntarily marching forward into yet another painful experience.  I am going to have these two inferior, non-matching, protruding veneers chiseled out of my head this morning, have the two neighboring teeth ground down to nubs as well, and have four (purportedly) glossy, perfect, translucent modern veneers applied to my front four teeth, thereby fixing my 'good enough' cracked unmatching smile into what is hopefully a beautiful, normal-looking smile. 

Do I need to experience this pain?  Probably not.  Although eventually that cracked corner is sure to come off again if I don't, exposing my sad, sensitive little nubbin of a toothlet underneath and making me look all kinds of hillbilly.  I don't want to live with that risk, and I'm tired of being just 'good enough'.  I want to push myself beyond, achieve something more (even it if is vain and shallow in this case), despite the pain required to get there.  My wallet is sure to be hurting after this as well, but the pain and discomfort and money and risk are all the price I'm willing to pay to take a step up to the next level.

It's like anything in life though.  Dentistry can be applied as metaphor to relationships.  Do you take the leap?  Risk your just-ok smile for one that could possibly be more expensive (taking more time, energy, effort,) and potentially end up worse (more broken hearted than the last time, when it ends)?  Or does your fear of The Chair and your past negative experiences in it keep you cowering at home with your 'good enough' teeth?   

I guess when you boil it all down, I am a risk-taker.  I put it out there.  I don't hold back.  I gamble.  Not compulsively, mind  you.  I weigh the risks.  I'm a Libra, after all...that's what we do.  Put the potential negatives on one side of our scales (risk, cost, effort, pain) vs. potential positives (LOVE! HAPPINESS! FULFILLMENT!) on the other.  I am willing to go through the pain of change (and change, even good change, is always painful) in order to have just a shot at those positives.  I understand when people aren't willing to, though.  I don't always agree with them.  Sometimes I pity them.  They are just more financially or emotionally conservative than I am.  Hell, they'll probably retire with a lot more money in the bank than I will, and may suffer a lot less heartbreak along the way.  But I'm choosing to take the risk, bet it all on black, and see what happens on the other side of the changes.  It could be awesome.  Because isn't that what life is about - taking a chance, despite the pain?