Wednesday, November 4, 2009

points to ponder

I ran into a former colleague a few weeks ago. I haven't met her for a quite some time..eversince she stopped working- to take care of her two children. So, suffice to say she wasn't around when I first started my braces treatment and certainly wasn't around to see the slow changes that were happening to me and my mug. Anyways...we chit-chatted for a while when the inevitable questions popped out. When I told her that I had had a jaw surgery, she looked surprised, saying that she never noticed that there was anything wrong with my teeth.. however, when I said that I went through the surgery to correct my bite, she mimed this look of over-extending her lower jaw and... i just ho-hmm-ed my confirmation. She DID remember how I looked but just didn't think the condition needed any correction.
There was another thing she said that sort of got me thinking about what aesthetics mean to some people. I had talked briefly about the surgery, some of the effects... and I had started saying something like..."I went through the surgery...All in the name of..." I was going to say..All in the name of beauty or something about a good smile/ bite...etc. She finished off my sentence with.."vanity". I was about to correct her when something held me back.
It was most certainly not vanity. I realised it was quite fruitless expaining to her why I did it. :)... so, I turned the conversation somewhere else and that was that.
Vanity... desire for admiration because of one's personal attainments or attractions. Nope. Definitely not that.

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