Small Dents
The old is gone, the new is different
My sign language teacher revealed to us she was deaf several lessons after the beginning of the course.
She wasn’t born deaf.
She learned to speak like you and me. Over the years, she started noticing her hearing was worsening. She was practically deaf by the time she was old enough to have children.
Cochlear implants were a foreign concept. Sign language was not.
She’s Luo. Most of the Kenyan sign language vocabulary hails from the Lake region of Kenya. Kibera, the largest slum is home to many Luos. She learned to sign from them. She learned their style. She learned their culture. She had to learn another language anew because she didn’t take heed of the ongoing changes. She likely dismissed them.
Don’t we all?
A simple headache. Nothing a short trip to the shop or the pharmacy wouldn’t solve. Forgetfulness? Must be old age. Or the night out with my friends. A chest pain, left-sided, crushing, moving to your shoulder when you run or climb the stairs? Dushane, our Top Boy, dismissed these signs.
Think of your car. If you don’t have one, like me, think of your future car. Now imagine the busy streets of Nairobi or whichever city from which you hail. The roads are teeming with young folk of all stripes. Some will hit your car outside a club. Others outside a concert. Some will hit it with their car. Intentionally or otherwise. But the dents are not as big as to warrant immediate intervention. It still functions.
One evening, your steering wheel goes numb. You swerve but the metallic beast surges straight. You’re not in a Transformers movie, so you know there’s a problem. In a panic, you hit the brakes fast. The person on your rear end bumps into you. Hard. Now you have a large dent.
Now it needs fixing.
We stroll past the small dents. We act on the major dents. But after a series of small dents, the old form slowly fades away. The new body is nothing like the old one.
The old me is dead and gone, dead and gone
Toph’s strategy
She was born blind.
She was, however, born into one of the richest families in the Earth Kingdom.
My favourite character in the series, Toph learned to see the world using her feet. Her teachers were badgermoles — giant, blind, underground creatures who could bend the earth to their will.
Animals have a knack for honing their skills. So Toph learned from the best. She became the best.
Barely a teenager, she joined the earth-bending fighting competition and defeated all her contenders. All of them. She has never lost a battle.
Her strategy was to break the opponents bit by bit. And when the system was functionally paralyzed, she would deliver the final blow.
She harnessed human insensitivity to the small dents to achieve what no earthbender has ever done.
Some of the most successful companies thrive off this strategy. Think of the tobacco companies. They depend on your friends introducing you to the stick. A puff on the first day. Three on the second. Then every weekend. When they have functionally paralyzed you, to the point where you can’t work without it, they deliver the final blow — withdrawal symptoms.
They ensure the disclaimer is present so they are never to be blamed.
Small dents.
You didn’t notice them.
It’s no different from falling in love. You don’t know when you start slipping. By the time you’re done building a future, in your castle in the clouds, you are falling. Hard. When you’re functionally paralyzed, the blow comes.
Small dents.
You didn’t notice them.
Or when your gas cylinder faithfully serves you every day for two months. In this case, the packaging is deliberate. It helps to keep the gas in check. Unfortunately, it keeps you blind. Blind to the small dents you make with every meal you make. And in the dead of the night when it’s raining like you missed Noah’s Ark, 11 pm, in the middle of a nationwide blackout, your gas runs out.
Small dents.
You didn’t notice them.
You only wait for the large ones.
The big fix
The large dent glares at you.
Children point at it when you leave for work. They don’t like your car because of the large dent. They don’t care that it’s an Aston Martin. It has a dent. It needs fixing.
Like the black eye and the swollen face you had when you walked into the hospital that Friday evening. One of your friends became excited and threw one too many punches at the wrong people. The punches didn’t land.
Like the knight you are, you tried to stop him.
And one punch lands.
On your face.
And several teeth land.
On the floor.
Not their teeth.
Your teeth.
Plus a black eye for good measure.
Two major dents. Those ladies you were eyeing now eye you, tainted with a black eye. Like the school-going kids, they don’t like you because of your large dent. It needs fixing.
You walk into the casualty section and the nurse feels the pain on your face. You see it on her face. Your functional eye confirms she’s pretty. Her expression isn’t. She sympathizes with you. You ask for her number but she doesn’t give it to you. What she gives are directions to the doctor on call, who also winces when she sees your face.
A second chance.
You make your shot.
It runs short.
Must be the dent.
The two large dents mar your chances of getting a hot babe’s number. You need fixing.
Your friend, who escaped the punches, is the one by your bedside, sobered like two watchdogs after seeing your two premolars hit the ground in the club. He doesn’t have a dent.
He was too blind to see the small dents which ended with you having to bear the brunt of an agitated boxer. The universe felt you needed to sit next to a boxer that evening.
Big dents are unmistakable.
Small dents are dismissible.
Small dents land you in trouble. Big dents potentially turn you into a philosopher — you have to think about your next move because the damage is already done.
Sometimes, you have no time to think about these dents. They can permanently paralyze, destabilize, or end in your demise.
Plus ya hit four times
But it hit ya spine
Paralyzed waist down now ya wheelchair bound
But you know who is sensitive to small dents?
You won’t believe it.
Garage on the move
You.
Yes, you.
Only that you don’t pay much attention to it.
Your body notices when you scratch your skin. When you pop a pimple, you create a pool of blood. You stimulate inflammation, and white blood cells stream to the island you created with the epicentre being your unpopped pimple.
Your bladder distends with every inflow of urine. Your rectum dilates with every deposition of poop. Your eye cleans itself up every single time. Your hair falls off and tries to create some more. Until it can’t.
You are a garage on the move.
But you don’t know it.
Complex body forms could only have existed if they were sensitive to the small dents. They learned that large dents are life-threatening. They have to be ready when it strikes. So the heart forged a partnership with the brain. The muscles with the bone. Hormonal system with the nervous system. In the face of danger, adrenaline would be pumped with well-synchronised responses.
Readiness for when the major strike comes depends on the level of preparedness. It helps if one is sensitive to the small dents. These can be solved quickly and fast. They can be overlooked by every other person who isn’t you, but you don’t overlook them. They prepare you. You learn along the way. These small dents are opportunities to prepare and increase one’s toolset, to be an efficient garage on the move.
Evolution would be pointless without these sensitivities. Evolution is relevant because of these sensitivities. Evolution is unavoidable with these sensitivities.
Evolution sings:
I turn my head to the East
I don’t see nobody by my side
I turn my head to the West
Still nobody in sight
So I turn my head to the North
Swallow that pill that they call pride
That old me is dead and gone
But that new me will be alright
What I’m trying to say is…
Evolution knows the relevance of the small dents.
You know the relevance of the large dents only because evolution took care of the small dents.
Why don’t we learn from evolution?
This song inspired some of the lines used in this article. Source — YouTube