Twisting Nature

Hello High Heelers

I win the world’s ‘Stupidest Person Award’ this week. I really do! Why? Well, I managed to glue my lips together with nail glue. Oops! Dumb – yes. Funny – not so much (particularly since laughing requires opening the mouth).

What happened? Well. We’re back to nail tragedies. Sorry flat-shoed-ones! Right, so, my gel nails began to peel off – as they do when your nail technician is away having a baby and you have no back-up plan. So in desperation I ran out to the shops and bought a little bottle of nail glue. How clever I was! Then I began to carefully squeeze glue onto my nail. The awful stuff would not come out. I had to squeeze harder and harder. I even used my teeth. Eventually I found success and squirted the stuff in large amounts all over the offending nail (ignoring the ‘warning’ on the bottle – of course).

Since there was so much glue it was taking forever to dry. So I leant in and began blowing the glue dry – just a little closer than necessary. I got a little ‘high’ from the fumes and the insanity encouraged me to start blowing more madly and closely. I eventually, somehow (I have no idea how) managed to get a little glue on my lip. And when it comes to super glue, all you need it a little for a big oops! I ended up wincing in pain with my lips firmly bonded together. Not budging. Idiot!

So for a whole evening, I was quite literally, speechless. And for me, that’s not good. It seems these days if I’m not putting my feet in my mouth, I’m gluing it together. We spoke about multi-tasking a while ago. I was not multi-tasking. I was not doing anything else other than focussing on successfully completing my nail surgery. So why did I mess it up so badly?

Well. You see. I was rushing it. I was being impatient. I was making the glue dry rather than letting it do it in its own time. I was forcing nature against itself (ok, well fake-nail-glue nature – but you get the point!) As much as we want things to go our way, we also have to accept things the way they are. Despite the fact that we want to do a million things a day. We can’t. Unless we’re Natalie Maroun. Natalie can get through five meetings, create a proposal, transform an organisation, take over the world and buy a pair of killer Louboutins – all before lunch. And that’s only a slight exaggeration.

The rest of us have to settle for being human. If it takes an hour to bake a cake due to the nature of heat exposure needed and ingredient reactions – that’s how long it takes. You can’t speed up the process; you can’t then have your cake and eat it (unless you like raw eggs). That’s the nature of nature and it’s a pain! So you can get frustrated waiting for the rain to come or you can waste time, resources and money on watering your garden just before the heavens open up.

I’m not by any means suggesting that changing nature is impossible or undesirable (think of square watermelons, vitamin enriched water and Demi Moore.) That’s the wonder of science. I’m merely suggesting that sometimes you shouldn’t. Sometimes when you fight nature, she fights back and you end up speechless, like a fool with your mouth glued together.

It’s up to you to figure out what cannot be changed and what can. What shouldn’t be changed and what should. Good luck with that. All I can assure you is that when you overdo the glue – it takes longer than the promised ‘3 seconds’ to dry.

This week get your feet on the ground. Work with nature and make changes for the best and leave things as they are when they’re in the right place, as you climb heavenward. Have a wonderful week.

Cheers,
Jo