the tooth shall set you free.

i’ve been waiting years for someone to ask a certain question, because i have a great answer. nobody has asked and so i can wait no longer. 

the question i envisioned some earnest spiritualist to ask would go something like this: “nathan, with your tremendous wisdom please tell me, when will i lose my ego? i meditate religiously and follow all the right precepts. i study the scriptures, perform good deeds and yet still i feel terribly ego-full” “yes,” i would respond patronizingly. “you are a great aspirant and therefore i will now impart unto you the true and largely esoteric knowledge: you will lose your ego, my young student, when your teeth begin to fall out, especially the front ones.”

that is, after all, my direct personal experience. having been a monk and a yogi, after silent retreats and strict spiritual practices, it was only on that day many years ago when my bottom two front teeth got yanked that i knew the process had really begun. that was an honest-to-god, bonafide, true spiritual experience. and it was surprising.

there was a large fish tank in the centre of the waiting room with hardly a few tiny little fish swimming around confusedly. i presumed the tank was to help clients feel relaxed, but frankly it had the opposite effect on me. i kept wondering if those were only the last surviving fish. i don’t know why i had that sense. perhaps it was actually a pervasive subconscious sense of impending doom. for whatever reason, i was far from feeling relaxed.  

i’d made the appointment for an unrelated issue. however, from the start my dentist recognized with a sense of urgency that those two bottom front teeth were dangerously deteriorated in some way and he summarily, unceremoniously pulled them. i clearly recall him losing his grip on one of the chiclets as it sprang forth. and the thing had such an impressive trajectory that it landed with a loud clang on the tiled floor.   

the sound of that clang has stayed with me. it has come to represent, in my mind, the starting bell to the rest of my life. i walked out of that office that day with a mouth-full of cotton and a realization that i was not the same person who had entered an hour earlier. i was no longer who or what i had thought myself to be. i‘d be walking around with a large space in my mouth for the next few weeks and, interestingly, i felt strangely freed. i felt strangely relieved.

one of my very last remaining teeth was pulled out not long before the pandemic pandemonium pounced upon the world. i walked out into the reception area once again with a mouth-full of cotton. and the lady behind the counter asked if i’d like to schedule a cleaning, to which i spluttered: “for what?” she just gazed up at me blankly, but the young dental assistant beside me began laughing. so i turned to her and mumbled: “do you charge by the tooth?”

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