Last Tuesday I got all four wisdom teeth out. So forgive me if I seem a bit dumber.
I was a little scared going into the surgery because it was my first time going under general anesthesia. I was also told about 10 years ago by a surgeon that a nerve was a bit close to one of the teeth and there was a chance it would get severed, leaving me without a sense of taste.
My wife, a medical malpractice attorney in a previous life, put me at ease by telling me how low the chances were of me dying from anesthesia or permanently losing my sense of taste. I finally went through with it 20 years after my dentist first told me to get my wisdom teeth removed. I’m determined that the surgery and its bloody aftermath will live in my memory as one of the best worst things.
Grass Is Always Browner
I’ll spare you most of the gory details, but if you’ve had any major dental surgery you know how rough it can be. The logistics of my last week of healing and being unable to practice martial arts or teach or eat 99% of the food I love would not be something I would choose. Yet honestly, comparing my experience to that of most people I’ve talked to, it wasn’t too bad. I seem to be a real “grass is always browner” type of person.
We always hear about people thinking the grass is greener in someone else’s pasture, but I tend to think it’s probably browner. Things could always have been worse. Sometimes it’s because things actually turn out better for me (instead of chipmunk cheeks, my jaw seemed to just get wider for a few days in what my family called the “Zac Efron surgery look”). Usually it’s because of what neuroscientists call valence assignment.
Valence and Reframing
Valence assignment is the process of linking an emotion or feeling with a memory. This is usually automatic; something happens, we have a positive or negative feeling about it, then we generally have that feeling when we remember what happened. This helps us seek out or avoid similar experiences in the future. In an article I read recently by Jeff Haden, he uses the example of how he and his neighbor experienced a flood in two very different ways. The same basic thing happened to both: they were evacuated and their homes suffered extensive damage. Yet while his neighbor remembers it as a traumatic event, Jeff remembers it fondly. The neighbor focuses on the negative aspects of the fear he experienced and cost to fix his house, but Jeff focuses on the way everyone was helping each other out.
There is of course a whole biological/chemical process that takes place, but the part we can generally affect is how we choose to frame or reframe experiences. This is like how I talk to you all in class as you’re doing a plank about the difference between pain and suffering. While suffering is bad, pain can be good if we frame it as a sign that we are getting stronger. We can also think about what we learned from an otherwise negative experience. For example, I learned to listen to my wife when she reads the aftercare instructions (I brushed my teeth too early and got a little extra bleeding in).
Choosing the Memory
While this might just seem like positive thinking, it also helps us to get real growth from a situation that might otherwise just make us feel disempowered and stuck. That heavy feeling of being stuck makes it difficult to flow and come up with creative solutions. A reframe of past and current experiences that helps us stay positive and light helps us to stay present and more effective.
While I’m still dealing with a fair bit of pain, I can already tell getting my wisdom teeth out will be a generally positive memory. After all I got to catch up on some TV, eat lots of pudding and have something to complain about and get sympathy for. I also get to remember how brave I was if I ignore how most people go through this at half my age. So get to work reframing some past and present experiences, assign some positive valence, and enjoy having however many teeth you have.
