Reinventing the Wheel

Why is it OK to use others' ideas in order to prevent "reinventing the wheel", but we have to constantly reinvent ourselves to every person we meet to earn ourselves any value?

So, you leave college, change jobs, and suddenly that perfect attendance, A+ average and raving reviews from your college professors mean absolutely nothing. You have to perform above average on the corporate tasks set before you over and over again to once again gain that superior reputation.

Then, you change doctors three times in the last five years due to your medical coverage, and along the way all those years in a row of normal results mean nothing, and you have to start out at year one again and again (even though you've been in the same monogamous married relationship for the past three years and tested normal for the past 10 and had every detail of your past medical history faxed over each time). The new eye doctor also doesn't get it until you're there three years in a row. Then he says, well, something must be wrong.

You graduate college, get married, have a baby and after that, fall off the face of the Earth. It is difficult to renew that sense of excitement or level of care people have for you during those times. If you're not shopping for a gown or picking up a layette, you're nobody. Unless maybe you've somehow found the key ingredient to erasing laugh lines. Even then, you'd have to pitch your product with a huge marketing budget in order for anyone to hear about it.

Then, you're in a nursing home with no visitors and your most exciting feat for the day is planting a fricken' tomato seed. Most situations, relationships, types of people, and news events aren't "fresh" to you anymore. You can't bungee jump from a New York building anymore. And even if you were a world-renowned artist a few decades back, no one would stop long enough to learn about it because you're not "fresh" anymore.

This is why it is so important to not write people off because the first time you saw them, they had a toothpaste smudge on their sleeve. Every one of my best friends will tell you that they didn't think much of me when they first saw me. It took a long time and a lot of exploration to find out who I really was and that I might be worth being around. I myself have been surprised to find out certain things about people that I never would've imagined and found love in an unlikely place. I despised my own husband when I first met him. That's the trouble. Most of us are all too dismissive. Try not to miss out next time, okay?

By the way, Miss Bride-of-the-Year, while we're overjoyed about your union, please remember that once this is all over, the hype will disappear very rapidly. Try not to ruin friendships, pine over icing colors for too long, or float your head too high, because we all need you back on Earth, and we don't want to have to cringe at the thought of you when you come back.


P.S. What is happening to cinnamon-flavored gum? This cure for my boredom-of-the-mouth (more on that in a later post) is disappearing from every well-stocked candy shelf imaginable. Wrigley's cinnamon? Are you out there somewhere?