Favourite descriptions #1

My work colleague has an unrivalled talent for describing the things in life she is less than fond of. It may be in the way she says it, but today's was a corker:

"Hummous? Yuk. It's like garlic sand."

I love hummous, but I don't even have a comeback for that.

A sausage a day...

...will kill you, apparently. The Metro reports that one sausage (or three rashers of bacon) a day can increase your risk of bowel cancer by one fifth. I'm not veggie, and although I'm not really in a position to lecure to anyone about health and nutrition given the shameful state of my diet lately, I think the news that processed meat isn't good for you isn't really news, is it? God help the woman on BBC3's Freaky Eaters who would eat nothing but sausages (burnt ones no less), poor love.

On freaky of a different kind, the Metro also reports that a man from Ohio has been charged with having sex with his garden table. I think the less said about this the better. The only reason I note this is the caption written under his picture, which eloquently describes him as 'alleged table-sexer'. Well I suppose I can't charge them with inaccuracy, now can I. Don't you just love the tabloids?

Quotes of Note #1

Prison Break, Season 2, Episode 11.

Bill Kim, in answer to Special Agent Paul Kellerman's reasons for not following orders:

"I don't want to hear terminology from the save-your-ass handbook, Paul."

I love this show. I think I may have a copy of that book somewhere. :o)

Daylight Robbery

OK, that might be a somewhat inaccurate title, since I’m referring to Daylight Saving Time. Ah, good ol’ DST, which is actually meant to give us more daylight, or technically more evening-light, until autumn at least. I do like evenings when the sun sets later and it’s always nicer leaving work while it’s still light (doesn’t feel depressingly like the evening is over, as it does in winter), but I always resent that hour the powers that be take away from March and shove in October. I don’t know why. I mean, it’s not as if I really lose an hour of my life, and goodness knows I’ve wasted enough hours myself doing random, pointless activities, but the clocks always seem to go forward when I could really do with that extra time. I had so much to do today and I’ve had two nights running without quite enough sleep, so knowing a had one hour less of it seemed to make me grumpy as soon as I woke.

The joke is, for all my protest, I know I would most likely have wasted that hour anyway. A perfect example being the hours I’ve spent today trying to fix some stuff on my computer, burn some files to disc and download a few things, all for the purpose of trying to get my PC to work more quickly and efficiently. I ignored all the other more important things I had to do around the house, thinking it would only take a little while, but before I knew it the day was gone and I seem to have created more problems than I have solved. Another case in point is me writing this blog as it approaches midnight, when I’m seriously lacking sleep and have to get up for work in the morning.

Hmm. I guess this irritation of mine has nothing to do with DST. I think I just like having something else to blame for my own time-inefficiency and disorganisation. On the plus side, British Summer Time has officially ‘begun’. Hahaha. That’s a joke that never gets old.

The Acquirement of Wisdom

My wisdom teeth are growing again. My jaw aches and I have sore, swollen gums. I’m miserable, in pain, grumpy, unable to eat properly and am experiencing a new appreciation for the phrase ‘down in the mouth’. Thankfully I know this is a temporary situation. They’ve been growing on and off for more than maybe five years. For weeks, sometimes months at a time, I feel nothing. I live with the belief (or hope) that they have reached the peak of their growth and won’t bother me again. I can ignore them. I sometimes even forget about them completely. Then, almost like they are offended at my temporary amnesia, they’ll randomly have a little growth spurt and remind me again, rather painfully, that they do exist. Even now, after five years or more, they still aren’t all fully grown, and after five years I’m still not really sure why I need them. In fact, had I not had four teeth removed to facilitate my teenage orthodontic experience, there wouldn’t even be room in my mouth for them (any incredulity about this and comments about me having a big mouth are not welcome at this point, lol).

This most recent growth spurt demanded my attention enough to be curious about why they are so-called ‘wisdom teeth’. A quick Wikipedia search suggests that this is actually a common name across many world cultures. The description, it seems, simply resulted from the fact that these particular teeth, unlike the rest of them, appear in adolescence/early adulthood when one is supposedly wiser than in childhood. The literal meaning of the Arabic version is ‘the tooth of the mind’. In Korea, the name translates to ‘love teeth’, rather dramatically referring to the age at which they appear being a time when most experience the pain of first love.

I like the way words, phrases and descriptions come about like this, sometimes from a literal description, sometimes a more poetic observation. The term ‘wisdom teeth’ may have come about because of the age when they appear, rather than a belief that the appearance of these teeth actually made the owner wiser, but this particular comparison of physiological growth with mental or emotional growth is interesting to me because the processes are actually somewhat similar. The similarity between the growth of one’s ‘wisdom’ teeth and the emotional growth necessary for acquiring real wisdom has got me thinking.

Growing as a person and gaining wisdom from your experiences is not always an enjoyable experience. I know this because I’ve been experiencing such growth, the emotional kind, myself lately. Hopefully I’m a little wiser as a result. Good gracious, I hope so, because the lessons I’ve learned have sunk in slowly and somewhat painfully over the past couple of years. Most will agree that when you ignore a problem, it usually gets worse. As a nurse, my Mum will testify that problems, like stress, if left ignored or suppressed will simply manifest themselves in another, often physical way: high blood pressure, stomach ulcers and the like. I’ve only noticed lately just how many problems I had been either ignoring, in denial or even completely unaware of. Sometimes those unaddressed issues would surface in some other way, just like those pesky wisdom teeth, a physical reminder that I needed to deal with things and sort them out. But I didn’t really get it. I didn’t really understand what the problem was. I thought I had dealt with things, that I was doing OK, so I played ostrich instead. Hmm. Bad idea. With the problems ‘successfully’ suppressed, I could plod along in blissful ignorance. But a few months later, there were the growing pains again. Just like the pain and discomfort my growing teeth would bring, I’d feel miserable, unable to function efficiently and generally down in the dumps.

The thing about physical growth or change is that whether you are ready for it or not, whether you want it or not, it happens. Your body doesn’t ask your permission for it to develop. It just does it. But emotional development is different. It can come about subconsciously to a degree, such as the natural increase in maturity we experience through our teens and into adulthood. But often, to really grow and develop, we have to make some sort of conscious decision. There has to be some sort of cognitive process, awareness, education, enlightenment. The problem here is that this isn’t always easy. Often the things we learn about ourselves and our behaviour are uncomfortable. They can be awkward, embarrassing, depressing and even painful. It’s easier and usually the more appealing option to just ignore them. But doing this just hinders the development of an individual and further, can have a detrimental effect.

The thing with improvement is that it necessitates change and most humans are creatures of habit. We generally don’t like change. We get comfortable, set in our ways, content to carry on as we have always done until we experience those glitches, those emotional aches and pains that tell us something isn’t quite right. Even then we tend to soldier on through them, numbing the feeling with denial and taking the ‘easy’ route that doesn’t require us to confront the problems we have been ignoring.

But the positive aspect of acquiring real wisdom, as opposed to the toothy kind, is that we have a choice. We can control how we deal with it and therefore determine how long we suffer with the growing pains, if at all. We can face the challenges head on, deal with them, accept them, change them or resolve them. We can remove the negative aspects of the situation and learn the lessons from them. We can also take the positive parts of the situation on with us, make some changes in our behaviour, circumstances and attitude, and mature as a result. Or we can keep denying our faults and weaknesses, ignoring our mistakes, justifying our actions and convincing ourselves of our own faultlessness. But one day we might wake up and find we’re in a lot of pain, are unable to function properly or are in a situation that was perhaps initially not ideal but is now suddenly hugely inconvenient.

The acquirement of wisdom takes time. It’s not easy. It’s a gradual, sometimes fragmented, progressive and cumulative process. It occurs at different times, stages and speeds for each individual. Everyone experiences and reacts to it differently. Maybe there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way of dealing with emotional and spiritual growth, but there is definitely a more efficient, effective or desirable way of doing so for each individual. I have learnt that the head-in-the-sand approach can only lead to a head filled with sand. If you don’t deal with your problems, they’ll certainly find a way to deal with you. There is no quick-fix, but the seemingly inconvenient efforts we have to make are certainly beneficial in the long-term. It’s a shame I had to learn the hard way. I’ve grown, I’ve wised up, maybe only a little, but it’s a step in the right direction. Now, if I could just speed up the growth of these teeth of mine…