Camosophy: Relationships are Like Tubes of Toothpaste

Paula has written a blog about a part of her life, and I made a comment referring to the "toothpaste analogy" that I have "thunk up" over the years (the recent years). Then Tornado asked me "the question" that Brewin threatened people with "marriage or tar-and-feather" should anyone ask me.

Well Tornado, I'm so glad you asked! I started to write this on Paula's blog, but realized that it has become a blog in and of itself.

This is my toothpaste analogy, and how I have come to view an aspect of life that we cherish, respect, require, but also one that has dramatically changed from our parents' generation in how we regard it....

You see, marriage is a lot like a tube of toothpaste. When you first see it lined up on the shelf it's really hard to choose the one that you think is just right for you. You look at the box, the colours, what the flavour is, how much sugar is in it, whether it's designed to whiten your teeth, for smokers, for plaque, and all that stuff. And the competition is fierce, but they all have their fine points.

In the end, you pick the one you THINK is best suited to you.

You take it home...

 And you open the box.... in anticipation and excitement.... and it still looks pretty good.

You put it up on the shelf for a while because you know you have some other toothpaste you want to finish off first, but all the while you're looking at this, you are convincing yourself that this is going to give you what you really need, a clean mouth, fresh breath, reduced peridontal infection, and lovely white teeth.

So you crack it open when it's time to "do the deed" and you squeeze it onto your toothbrush (or finger if you are out camping and forgot your toothbrush) slowly... relishing the way it comes out. You think about how the commercials do it and make it look sooooo goood with that little squiggle, the wave, and the end little... *flick* back upon itself. 

Of course you don't make it look nearly as good, but you shrug. Then maybe you wet the toothpaste... or maybe you wetted the toothbrush before, or maybe you like to start dry and wet it with your own saliva, but you put it into your mouth....

And as it approaches your lips you breathe in because you want to see whether it really does have that cassis, or lemon, or orange, or wintergreen fragrance that you hope will remain upon your breath when all is done..... Do you like it? Love it? Are your first impressions (second impressions actually, because the first ones where the outside packaging) meeting your expectations? Maybe... maybe not... Maybe it's stronger than you expected, or doesn't have the favour you were hoping for, or maybe no flavour at all... or maybe it smells too sweet... No mind... no mind as you know that second impressions can also change so you forge on and plunge it into your mouth (after all, you did purchase it, and it would be a waste to just toss it away because the first smell didn't meet your possibly unrealistic expecations, right?)

And once it enters your mouth, and presses up against your teeth you are experiencing the actual toothpaste on a very tactile level. You immediately judge it by it's grit, how strong the "mint" is, how it feels in your mouth... does it foam up? is it salty? does it make you look like Cujo?

And you play with it in your mouth with your toothbrush as it mingles with your saliva, doing its supposed duty as you lovingly stroke your pearly whites....

And then you realize as the saliva moves along the tongue with the actual flavour of the toothpaste whether or not you love, like, are indifferent, don't like or find the taste absolutely disgusting. And your mind starts thinking about this in great detail, considering whether you will continue to brush, or to spit it out and rinse immediately, or to perhaps prolongue the brushing experience beyond your usually alloted moments, or perhaps you'll just finish the job and move on, unmoved.... unmoved...

But until that moment, until that very moment the toothpaste chemicals mixed with the saliva and touched the exact spot on your tongue that held the tastebuds which registered in your mind the exact experience of flavour, and more... you did not know. You could not have known whether your body and your mind would accept this, or reject it.

If you absolutely loved it, you look forward to the daily brushings. Maybe you spend more time brushing your teeth.... and your teeth will love you and reward you. Maybe you become a fan and repeat purchase the same product because it was so wonderful.... Ahhh..... life is good.... maybe you'll continue loving this toothpaste for years and years and years...

Or maybe not.

Maybe you will dislike it and throw it away immediately because it was so disgusting to you (this actually happened when I tried some kid's "bubble gum flavoured" toothpaste - I nearly gagged on the flavour and the sugar). You turn the other way, think "eh", it was only a tube of toothpaste and sure you wasted a few dollars, but at least you learned never to taste that variety again... And you move on.

Or maybe you are indifferent to it, but stick with it for whatever reason... you can't get to the store to buy another.... or it's a waste to throw away a full tube of toothpaste so you'll finish it and then look for something else....

But often, as time goes by, the body's tastes and likes/dislikes change.... just as our hair likes to change shampoo and conditioner after a while in order to "shake it up", so it is with the toothpaste. It happens, it's natural as we age that our tastebuds also mature along with us. And when that happens, sometimes what was once good, and was wonderfully meeting our needs for so very long (a drop in the cosmic bucket, actually), suddenly or even gradually begins to no longer meet our NEW needs, our changed needs that have changed and grown as have we during the growth and maturation phases of our lives.

Here is a real life example...

Mayu and I have been using the Amway toothpaste for probably over 10 years. I've loved it, loved the flavour, the way it freshens my breath, whitens my teeth (with my titanium-core toothbrush to help), gives the right amount of foam, not too much, not too little... how it doesn't leave a slime on my tongue after, and yet does a great job of cleaning off the morning cotton mouth... It's probably the best toothpaste we've ever found as it doesn't taste chemically or anything like that....

As you know, Mayu and I live a VLC Lifestyle (Very Low Carbohydrate). As the years progress, and those of you also moving in this direction will find out for yourselves in a few years more and more (maybe now you are getting a teeny inkling of what we are experiencing after 10 years of VLCL), the taste of sweet becomes stronger and stronger to the point that it becomes quite distasteful. The obvious sweets like cakes, soft drinks, etc. are noticeable early on (as Stefnee and Jenny have noticed, and Paula may be beginning to note), but the subtle ones too, become much more pronounced... and distasteful.

We have hit a point in our lives now when even the subtle amounts of sweet in our Amway toothpaste are even too sweet for us, although we have loved this toothpaste for 10 or more years, never thinking it was too sweet.

Our tastebuds have grown with us, have changed with us, and what we once loved and adored and stuck with through thick and thin for a very long time no longer suits our needs, no longer meets our needs, is no longer a toothpaste that we want in our lives.

We have a few tubes left in our "stock" and of course we will not be tossing them by the wayside, oh no. Not at all. For we are experienced enough to understand that although this toothpaste no longer meets our needs, we still have a responsibility to finish what we started out with. But we can also see that there is an end in sight, and we will not be purchasing this toothpaste any more. No longer do we believe that this toothpaste is for us "until death do us part". It no longer meets our needs.

This is not to say that the toothpaste is no good, or is terrible, or bad, or has become rotten... not at all... The toothpaste has not changed (well, maybe the manufacturer has changed the content a bit to suit the carboholic masses and to hook them to the sweet more, I cannot say), but we have. We have grown apart from the toothpaste over time. We are no longer a perfect match with this toothpaste. Therefore, it makes no sense to continually struggle with the "icky sweetness" of it by continuing to purchase it, and use it exclusively.

This is the time when it is right to make a change, a shift, a graduation, and move on to finding another tube of toothpaste that more matches our current needs, rather than continue to use one that met our needs 10 or more years ago.

Do we regret it? Do we pine over this lost opportunity to continue using this Amway toothpaste? No. Why not? Because it gave us some of the best teeth of our lives for the past 10 years! The memories of brushing, and frothing, and spitting, and rinsing, and flossing, and smiling, and checking our teeth and our smile, and our face, and our wrinkles and lines, and pimples, and aging, and hairstyle, and ... and.... and....

The things we learned about ourselves as we brushed our teeth with that wonderful Amway toothpaste are so precious, so wonderful, so filled with love and growth that neither of us has any regrets that we enjoyed it for 10 or more years, but that now we must move on and graduate to something new.

Sure, the toothpaste is too sweet now, and we are using the last tube in our stock as I write this. I don't like it anymore, but I'm not going to just toss it full, unused in the trash. I know this because before using this tube, I found another one that had a different flavour, different size, different colour, different price that has less sugar (and is cassis flavour yum!) and suits my "new and improved" tastebuds much better than the Amway stuff does now. At first when I tried it, I wasn't sure... but as I kept on using it, I really came to like it and think that when this tube of Amway is gone, I'll go out and get another tube of the other toothpaste again and use that for a while.  

But I need to finish using this tube first, to use it up. If I were younger, and inexperienced I may have just tossed it in the trash and said, "I don't like it. I don't need it." But that is rather immature, and maturity only comes through experience.

And this experience has allowed me to say that when I find a new toothpaste, and love the way it looks, although I may not immediately be in love with the taste, I am going to "give it the old college try" and stick it out for at least the entire tube before I look for something else, because my tastebuds may come to like it, I may change naturally to find it meets my needs. Of course if I abhor the taste, I won't take it any further and chock it up to experience.

But.... and this is the key point....

I have also learned this through my MBA studies, and through coming to understand business much better...

That you must try hard in your relationships, and not give up too early. And yet, after trying very hard, and working successfully, things DO change in the future as needs change (in business and in relationships). And when things change to the point that they no longer meet the needs of the parties involved, it is time to understand that a change IS necessary.

In business, to stick to a bad relationship will kill both businesses. Business leaders know this. So why do we refuse to acknowledge this in personal relationships? Why would we keep suffering through a personal relationship that is no longer mutually beneficial just because we made a promise, a contract in the beginning? People and businesses have to have that excitement, and the belief that it will last forever when they go into these agreements in the beginning, otherwise nobody would ever move forward in "joint-ventures" because all they would see is an imagined future failure and as you know, as soon as we imagine a future failure, we are hesitant to even take a chance. But just because we IMAGINE it, doesn't mean it is going to necessarily come true. If we imagine it so perfectly then yes, we are sabotaging ourselves before we start, and that is not a good thing to do in any venture.

I have come to believe that relationships, partnerships and even marriages should have the same "opt out" availability as businesses, or friendships have intrinsically built into them. Of course you need to give it time, try your best, see if you can adapt, adjust, change in ways that improve the relationship for everyone involved.

But, in the end, there are sometimes changes within a business, or an individual, or a relationship or even the properties of a tube of toothpaste that are out of our control, beyond our circle of influence, or even something that we directly influenced which led us onto a different route in life (like the VLC lifestyle that has made Mayu and I infinitely healthier).

This is life itself.

This is growth.

This is what it's all about.

This is why relationships are like tubes of toothpaste. Rolling from the end, or squeezing in the middle are just two options that we all have to enjoying our life with toothpaste!

So enjoy your tube of toothpaste as long as you can.

But when something changes so that the toothpaste no longer meets your needs, after you have tried to adapt to those changes and still find that it no longer works for you... think about letting that toothpaste go, and moving on to something that meets your needs now. But always work hard at choosing a toothpaste which best suits your needs, learning from your past experiences with toothpaste. The worst thing you could do is to learn you don't like a certain kind of toothpaste, and then go right out and buy the same kind of toothpaste again.

Having a tube of toothpaste that no longer meets your needs is NOT a failure, in any way, shape or form. Nope. Not at all because that toothpaste did give you exactly what you wanted and needed for a very long time. You learned a lot about yourself, and about the toothpaste through your relationship with it. You EXPERIENCED LIFE through that toothpaste for the duration of time you partnered with it. It met your needs, and you shared your love of it, with it in return.

Just don't go out and get the same toothpaste again. THAT would be really really dumb.

I have accounting, and then I'm off to Sabae for the day, but before I do anything else, after I hit "Save & Publish" I need to go and lovingly brush my teeth with the last tube of our Amway toothpaste, and reflect upon the NOW, upon my breathings, upon life as I am in it at this very moment.

The past is gone, it cannot be changed. The past cannot harm us. The future will never happen so it cannot affect us. Every future moment will become a NOW moment, and that NOW moment is where we need to live. In so doing, our future is affected, but not in a future sense, in a NOW sense.

So the next time you are mindlessly brushing your teeth, think of your breath, look into your eyes, feel your presence as you brush every tooth. Feel the brush on the teeth, the foam in the mouth, the taste on the tongue. Listen to the squeak as the toothpaste and toothbrush do their work. And don't forget to breathe...

My teeth & I love you!

Cam

P.S. I wonder if "My Teeth & I" would be a good sequel to "The King & I".... hmmm... a future YouTube video by Tugaboo Films....

P.P.S. Thanks Tornado, so much for asking! I love you!