Corns and Band-Aids

I'm going to intentionally foster a little creativity here, and go for National Blog Post Writing Month. My random topic for the evening is band-aids.

This reminds me of a childhood experience with corns. I mean, like the kind that grow on your feet. When I was perhaps 9 or 10 it seems I had these quite often.

I have this memory of being at my grandmother's house during the summer (where I would stay for a week at a time a few times), and being concerned about these corns on my feet. It wasn't that I thought they looked bad or that I was particularly worried about them; I just knew that they were abnormal growths that weren't supposed to be there. So I took a large nail clipper and began hacking away at the dead skin, and taking a tweezer and yanking out whatever that is in the core of it that isn't supposed to be there. And then I would take rubbing alcohol, which I seemed to think was the savior, making all things right and good, and blotted my skin-made-raw with it to kill off whatever contaminants were there or that I was introducing with the use of this rather crude form of surgery.

And while I did that, I composed a little song, which has stuck in my head to this day. It went like this: "What hurts often benefits/You've heard it said before and now you know/it's true"

See, I've never really believed in treating any problem with a band-aid. I've never believed in covering things up, sweeping them under the rug, ignoring it and hoping it goes away. For better or for worse, I've always believed in diving in for the root and digging until I get to the bottom.

It has served me well, mostly, inside of myself. It hasn't always served me as well in relationship to other people, because (I realize now) many people really are fond of covering things up. The happy balance is that I've learned that my own growth and change can't come about by sheer willpower; they need to happen in their own time. And in the case of other people, I cannot step in and move their wills. I must accept the reality another presents me with. Coming on like a bulldozer to force change in anyone or any situation is just as misguided as trying to heal cancer with a band-aid.