Listen Up: Why Everyone Needs an Oral Surgery Complication
The truest cause for celebration that I’ve had in a while was being able to bite into a turkey club sandwich yesterday.
For the last three weeks, I could only open my mouth about the width of a baby carrot.
When I arrived in the dentist’s office for my post-wisdom teeth surgery check-up the day before I was supposed to drive back to Notre Dame, the nurse took one glance at my still ginormous cheeks, turned her back to the sink to aggressively snap her rubber gloves on, asked me to open wide (which I could all of four centimeters), and muttered to me disapprovingly, “Well, be expecting some pain when he comes in.”
“He” was my dentist, and “he” wasn’t very happy with me. Apparently I had not iced enough following my wisdom teeth surgery and my jaw was now locked shut. I can honestly only remember crying twice in my life purely from physical pain: That time I fell off my orange Razor scooter trying to race my neighbor downhill (circa 2002), and three weeks ago when Mr. Dentist pressed his latex clad fingers into my teeth (without much warning) and literally tried to pry open my locked jaw.
No me gusta.
Thankfully, besides the fact that the right side of my tongue is still completely numb (like, why?) and I still only chew on the left side of my mouth, I’m back to 100% and hoping I don’t have to return to my dentist anytime soon.
While not being able to easily bite into my dad’s burgers definitely made the top of my “how-my-wisdom-teeth-complication-is-grinding-my-gears-today” list, the definite second is something that I have been thinking about a lot the last few weeks. There was one way in particular that my locked jaw and my (still) numb chin/tongue made daily life quite difficult:
Simple conversation was like a recurring dream in which I was trying to run effortlessly, but my legs were made of cement. Every time I attempted to talk, I expected words to flow out of my mouth easily, but my jaw was like, "NOPE! Muahaha". Besides the ache in my jaw, I was also in a constant battle with my dud of a tongue, that made each thentence thound like thith.
So instead, I did a lot less talking. The pain just wasn’t worth it. It was agonizing to suppress a funny comment I wanted to add, or to give Sparknoted versions of my longer stories of the summer, or even to refrain from taking long phone calls with people I missed, telling them I would promise to call later when my jaw was somewhat functional.
Talking became a burden, but its reciprocal became something I would think a lot about during those weeks:
Listening.
Virtually everywhere we turn there are advertisements for saving and preserving things that are significant and beneficial to our society: “Protect our trees!”, “Preserve this historic building!”, “Save puppies in the pound!” (cue Sarah McLachlan). The art (yes, it is an art) of listening is just as deserving of our advocacy, protection, and flat-out attention. Especially right now.
The value of listening should rise, as our current society is increasingly begging to be heard in nearly every capacity. I find this to be especially relevant within the context of college life. We are swimming in a pool of voices, some loud, some wavering, others shouting through a megaphone, all desperately treading to stay afloat, lest the noise drowns us in a silence of anonymity. From the start of freshman year, we are constantly encouraged to be in conversation, to be LOUD. In order to make friends, we must talk to new people and sell our likes and dislikes. In class, we are asked to volunteer, to speak, to participate, to contribute to the conversation. Even in the silence behind our phones and computer screens, we are blasted with the cacophonous collage of voices on social media: the tweets, the Buzzfeed lists, (this article), the op-eds, the Facebook statuses. As a junior, I am witnessing more of my upperclassman friends being required to network, to interview, to verbally promote themselves in the professional field. The mantra seems to be, “To talk is to be heard, and to be heard is to be identified, and if someone likes your identity, the door of opportunity opens.” It is how we have been trained to succeed and solve problems: Need a job? Network! Have an opinion? Speak up! Not doing well? Talk to someone about it! We are told that we have our own voice and we deserve to be heard.
But there is a difference between being heard and being listened to. I love college (and the world, really) because it is an open forum to express, debate, and tease out one’s own beliefs, opinions, or ideas. I love the endless conversation. But I think we need to reconsider how often we truly listen to people. And here I will add a condition. It cannot be passive listening, where we nod our heads in affirmation to signify that we have heard. Genuine listening mandates a respect for him or her who is speaking. And respect, in my opinion, coincides with the willingness to act. If we are genuinely listening to someone, we respect that person enough to help him or her if need be. If we listen beyond simply hearing words, we might just gain something deeper, something beneath the voice, something that could save someone. A plea. A “no.” An “I’m not okay.”
Because something else crossed my mind throughout those weeks. What if I could never talk again? What if my jaw was permanently shut? How would people know what I was feeling? How could people get to know me? Yes, I have my actions, but what about my words? It is kind of strange to think about how vital speaking is in conveying what we believe to other people. We may have a million thoughts shouting through our minds, but what comes out of our mouths is all that people will hear. It’s a simple thought, I know, but when you really think about it… the spoken word is a pretty darn important little vessel that carries the essence of who we are into the world.
I am not discounting the value of speaking, of networking, of tweetin’ ideas and facebookin’ articles- I love the constant waves of intelligence and wonder rolling in and out, molding the shape and identity of our generation. I am musing on the fact that we often forget about the power of turning off our phones, closing our mouths, and giving someone else’s words not only our attention, but also our empathy. We don’t have to agree with the words, but we do have to stop glossing over ‘just another voice’ and start valuing the dignity of the person in front of us.
Thinking about that, I’ll leave you with this. I don’t really want everyone to have an oral surgery complication (although the ice cream and Netflix ain’t half bad, and I finally was able to watch Footloose and Rocky in their glorified entirety- thanks mom). However, I think that not speaking as much as I usually do for three weeks taught me some good little nuggets of wisdom (ha - and the doctor thought he took my wisdom). I want to challenge myself and others to do this: 1. Listen to what people are saying. 2. Listen to what people aren’t saying. 3. Listen to what you’re saying. Words matter, stories matter, and you matter too :)
