Root Canal

Stay in your lane. Doctors should be doctors – don’t dabble in politics. Teachers should focus on teaching – stop telling us how to parent. Once you’ve paved an avenue for yourself, that’s the one meant to carry you towards the end goal of social impact, status, and piles of money. This is the pedagogy of capitalism we are digesting as we learn to specialize and hone our respective crafts, shaving bits and nibs off of our holistic humanity from the chiseled block of expertise. But yesterday, I was reminded what holistic humanity could look like during a visit to the dentist – a new dentist. I’d picked him out from a long list of recommendations based on a set of criteria that totally failed me. I’d come to him because, in addition to my assumption that he was a non-religious woman (wrong on both counts), his nighttime mouth guard was in the tough-but manageable price range, as opposed to the gut-punch and you-must-be-joking quotes I’d received elsewhere. I brought him the remnants of my former mouth guard – shards of a gummy buffer between my upper and lower jaws that served as a fleeting neutral zone between the warring parties while I sleep. He examined the exhausted, nearly unrecognizable gear, which, at this point, didn’t look that far off from the first one I had to replace after being half-eaten by a wild-eyed Pomeranian.

The dog had sneaked into my room and slipped it from the night stand, chewing it up so badly that at first glance I thought he’d gummed a hunk of cheese. But the Gouda in question revealed its true identity as I went to bed that evening and reached for my $600 supposed-to-last-a-decade mouth guard and it wasn’t sitting in its usual spot. I made an emergency replacement appointment, as every night without I was slowly but determinedly grinding my teeth into sand.

The dentist examined my second-generation night guard, now about 4 years old since its emergency conception. And at that moment, he leaned back in his roly chair and said, “Why are you doing this do you think? Why are you under so much stress?” The lumpy nugget in my throat that pops up at the end of chick flicks and YouTube videos of emotional reunions between lost puppies and their families jumped to life, like the metal ball rattling around the base of a Guinness can after the final swig. I forced it back down to its rightful place. In my 30 years of going to the dentist, I had never once had anyone ask “Why?” In fact, we often go to the doctor to ask ‘why’ ourselves – Why am I bleeding when I’m not supposed to? Why does it hurt when I push really hard right here? Why can’t I turn left? And they tend to write us off, telling us we’re really fine because they don’t know, but the unspoken truth is that they are unwilling to sacrifice any hold on perceived authority for the sake of shared exploration. Or they are choosing their narrowly defined lane to stay in – asking why would mean passing us to another doctor – one who is responsible for understanding the blood, not administering the band-aid.

But he’d stepped out of his lane to see if he could look behind the work he does to find the root of the problem. I demanded of myself that I not get choked up at the mere hint of human intimacy – of someone really trying to see me and help me. I shared that I’ve ground my teeth, stress or none, for almost a decade now. And that in my many years, I’ve never had anyone ask me that question.

He cocked his head slightly and said, “Do you know the Talmud?”

So many physiological reactions this guy was drawing forth from me. Now I could physically feel a hardening within my solar plexus and a force field go up between us. I grew up in the Bible Belt with Jesus everywhere – landscaping, dentistry, diners, street corner soap boxes, education, banking. How many doctors have tried to convert me – to slip Jesus into casual conversation subtly enough to not violate any HR policy but bluntly enough that I’d surely catch enough of a whiff of divine certainty to save my soul? Delicate, determined proselytizing is an art form woven neatly across all lanes. And because of my Jewish heritage but lack of dogmatic alliance, I am one of the few juicy pickins’ for evangelical Jews striving to expand Judaism by calling all non-practicing Jews home to the faith. So I’ve also called on my force field here in Jerusalem, plenty, too. I’ve gotten fairly adept at holding the integrity of my own spiritual compass while chameleoning my faith to satisfy pretty much anyone who comes at me with their cosmic duties ablazin’. But even so, my guard still goes up when folks segue to a conversion conversation.

“Well, the Talmud challenges us to look at the roots of the world;” He said when I nodded, “to dig deeper and ask ‘why’. So I try to apply that to my everyday life, too. Of course I can just make you a mouth guard and send you on your way, but I also have a responsibility to explore the causes that brought you here to see if I can truly help, not just offer a quick fix.”

I relaxed again, and felt my whole body release as the force field retracted. One of the most beautifully human things in the world is good people putting their philosophy into practice through genuine compassion and exploration. I realize that may seem like a contradiction to the causes of my tension a moment ago, but it’s different when the dogma gets pushed through a sieve of empathy and curiosity and sprinkled into the world. It’s the difference between a fire hose and a misting fan exacted on someone seeking respite from the heat.

The funny thing is, we teach this exact thing in my negotiation work: a lesson in asking “why?” In fact, we have the question printed on our pens and we use the roots analogy in our lessons to explain digging deeper to understand someone’s needs and interests – using the imagery of a tree rather than a tooth and gums, but very much the same idea.

It makes me chuckle at the idea of ‘expertise’ because I’m not sure how much Harvard negotiation experts Mark Gordon or Sheila Heen could tell you about the Talmud – and I don’t know if my kind new dentist could tell you much about the ladder of inference. But they’re both reflecting light from a prism that refracts the truth in hundreds of ways and bounces it off of books and academic conjecture and careers and religious practice. I think if we were to remember that prism more consistently, we wouldn’t be so rigid in the lanes that we force people into. I guess the tooth really does set you free.