By Jan Vicente B. Pekas
I went and got braces around this time last year so as to fix the crooked teeth I have had since high school. Many events have come and gone since then. There was the painful first few weeks after having them on. The many scares that I might have broken a bracket (The small metals bonded to the teeth) due to eating fried foods. And a couple of semesters of college have gone by just like that. We have also had an entire election and these braces have remained standing through all these events.
Now the end is in sight, the time is near that these braces are to be taken off. And graduation is close for the college students in our family. I may have felt that time have moved so fast, but the timeline of our lives have kept up and things are so much different now compared to before.
It won’t be long now till our focus will shift from doing school works to looking for jobs, managing house chores to managing people. The thought of all that still feels surreal, but it will be a necessary path to go through. Just as the remaining school subjects that stand in our way are a must to get done if we wish to move forward.
With these braces, I have felt both terror and joy. I’m overjoyed now that it’s fixing my teeth but for the first few weeks, the stabbing-like pain it induced upon my mouth felt inescapable and nights meant for sleeping were miserable times. Several times I had thought of just removing it and fixing a couple of misaligned teeth in exchange for all these knives upon my gums which I thought were not worth it. Thankfully, I stuck through it.
In the good times and bad, no matter how intense the feeling may be, no matter how jovial we feel or how gloomy times are, they all shall pass. It’s a bittersweet feeling to have these braces removed soon. I have grown accustomed to the feeling of metallic things inside my mouth already and feel it may be a strange adjustment to go through when it is removed. At the same time, it is a relief, that each pain monthly adjustments bring will end there. And the pain at the beginning is at least long gone now.
Both joy and pain, seemingly equal in how much they work up the soul and our being, will have their turns in making our lives interesting.
If we look beyond ourselves, the resulting perspective tells us not to worry too much about all the pain we feel and not be over excited for all the joyful times, for there are much more to come. It is a hard perspective to achieve but if we look at our lives as a whole then perhaps we may become wise enough to not get hung up on certain mistakes. So long as we live and breathe, there will always be a next time. Since life will always move forward, we can only be bolder and push through, because what is the size of a small mistake compared to the massive potential life can give.
**
