Talking to Kurt one night, we hit all the major subjects: marriage, happiness, work, ambition, and flossing. Kurt has a long list of things he wants to accomplish in the next year, both personally and professionally. I recalled what a Senior VP at Coke once told me about it taking 6-9 months for someone to change just one or two habits. I thought Kurt’s list was too ambitious (particularly the flossing bit).

I said, in hindsight, I could identify one successful change, one piece of evidence of forward progress in my life for each of the last two years. I’m not sure I picked each of those things in advance as the one pivotal change-maker for each year; I’m pretty sure I had a dauntingly ambitious list like Kurt’s and that these just happened to be the things I actually stuck to that paid me back in return. The Golden Rule never promised that every thing you do unto others will actually be done back unto you, but it seems the more good you do, the more you get paid back.

I said I needed to lower my expectations without giving up on certain things. I said it was like flossing. For now I’ve given up learning to floss daily. But I am making progress. Not many years ago I would floss for a week or two before and after my semi-annual dentist appointment. Then for one year I flossed at least once a month. Now that I’ve managed to check out Alaska Dental Associates, I’m averaging twice or more a week. Maybe soon it will be nearly every night. That’s progress.

Kurt got all excited like people shouldn’t get about dental hygiene.

He said that’s one of the things on his list, too. I began to think this attempt to become better flossers is so much more visceral than the other ‘big’ stuff we work on— or intend to work on— every day. I suppose, in a way, dental hygiene is just as big. The psychology of flossing is important to health and life outlook. It means taking care of yourself, your physical body. It means doing something lame— something that is mere “maintenance” as Tom Robbins laments— that only pays off in the very long run. It means looking to your retirement years, not being the naive youth who says “it would be cool to have dentures when I’m old!” It’s the same as tending your 401K, taking out life insurance, or planning your kid’s college fund. It’s mature and adult. Blech.

What if I said flossing was staring your own mortality in the teeth and saying ‘I defy you, O Grim Reaper (and your minions of Plaque and Gum Decay)’? Tend to your latter years and you’re seeking to outlive life projections, discover a little taste of immortality, cheat death for just a few more years. That sounds a little more compelling, doesn’t it?

The second-to-last point of the Scout Law reads: “A scout is clean.” If you’ve ever seen 11- to 17-year-old boys at a summer camp, you understand that there must be some leeway in this definition of ‘clean.’ But you gotta hand it to the scouts for not preaching to the converted. If they can plant the seeds of hygiene in teenage boys, then they can clean just about anyone up. Hey, even I’m learning to floss just 20 years since my last summer camp.

Thanks for reading. Cheers,

The last blog in this series discussed the sometimes not-so-fine line between bravery and abject idiocy.

Photos by AirplaneMouse and Simon Blackley