Common Sense

Stylin’ … while exhibiting common sense with my choice of sensible shoes

My recent visit to my orthopedic surgeon resulted in a “high ankle sprain” injury diagnosis complete with a fitting for an ankle brace. Following doctor’s orders, I am rocking the ankle brace to aid in my recovery — and wow, it has made a world of difference.

When discussing next steps in my healing process, I asked the doctor the obvious question: when could I return to my “normal”, day-to-day activities (thinking primarily of flying trapeze, yoga, etc.)? Her guidance?

“Use common sense.”

Hahahahahahaha.

Wait, do I have common sense? Where do I rank on the scale of complete Jackass-style idiot to vow of silence-style, never-do-anything-but-chant monk?

I do consider myself to be somewhat street-smart, in that you could pick me up and drop my anywhere in the world and in no time I would make friends with the locals and be down with the culture. (in contrast, my Ph.D.-candidate brother, with all of his book smarts, wouldn’t have a hope in hell of lasting a minute before the natives attacked). But street smarts isn’t common sense, is it. So what is my common sense diagnosis?

While I generally think that in the day-to-day aspects of life I exercise what could be considered quite a bit of common sense (I wear my seatbelt! I floss!), a lot of choices that I made in the past that contributed to making me who I am today would probably be judged to lack any form of it.

Quit my job without any future form of income identified? Yep, and it was a great decision.

End my marriage as I didn’t want to accept an ‘eh’ kind of life? Did that too, without regrets.

Pick up and move across the country just because? Um, I may have done that twice. So far.

Four decisions that, at the time, could have been judged idiotic turned out to be all right in the long run. To hell with common sense!!

But of course, I understand that when it comes to resting and healing an injury, the “common sense” that needs to be applied is different from the kind that helps us to navigate our life’s path. Boo. So, while I will not sit around with my leg up doing nothing, I will listen to my body, respond to its signals and take a break when I need to. Patience is not my strong suit, but I have too much to physically accomplish ASAP to risk further injury. While in some people’s eyes I may be putting myself at risk, I do know — and promise to respect — the difference between “just far enough” and “too far”.

I may respect this difference while wearing high heels … but what can I say. I have my own form of common sense … and it has worked for me so far!

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