Just Because It Fits Doesn't Mean It Fits

As a child I had an abundant curiosity about things and how they worked. I wasn’t exactly mechanically gifted; for instance, I couldn’t take a radio apart and put it back together and make it work, but I was curious nevertheless.

When I was four, on a Saturday afternoon, my Mom and Dad were getting all of us ready to go to some event. We were dressed in our Sunday best.

Mom helped me get dressed and then left me and continued with her other chores before we were to leave. I stayed in her room and was messing around with stuff on her dressing table. I found a box of plastic snap-together pearls that I thought were the most fascinating things in the world.

For some unexplained reason, I wanted to see how many of these pearls I could stick up my nose. Seems I was able to get three pearls up my nose before I decided it was best that I remove them before I got caught for doing something I probably wasn’t supposed to be doing in the first place.

I was able to successfully remove two of the pearls, but in my youthful exuberance to put them there, I jammed them in too hard and this last pearl was lodged way too far up my nostril and there was nothing I could do to make it come out. I knew I was I in big trouble, but there was no way I was going to confess what I had done.

And then came the moment of reckoning!

My Mom came back into her bedroom to give me one last going-over before we left for our event.

One of my Mom’s techniques to assure that we were fully ready was to clean our ears and nose with a bobby pin. Mom began to work on me; first the ears, and then she moved to the nose.

She put the bobby pin up my right side and heard a click. She pushed a bit more and mused to herself, “What in the world?” She tilted my head back and saw this shiny orb starring back at her.

She called out to my Dad, “Jay, come here!”

Dad called back, “What’s the matter Mother?”

“There’s something wrong with Mike.”

Dad came, shined a flash light up my nose and saw the shinny pearl. He asked what I had done and I had to tell.

He immediately dropped what he was doing and took me down to the corner doctor’s office (can’t remember his name). The doctor laid me out on his examination table, shined a light up my nose and began pressing and probing around on my nose.

All of a sudden he pulled on my arm and jerked me up off that table and put his hand under my mouth and out popped the pearl, no pain, no problem, no fuss.

Well, that was a happier ending than what might have happened, wouldn’t you agree?

Here’s the point. Just because it fits, doesn’t mean it fits. Those pearls fitted perfectly in my nose, but they didn’t belong in my nose.

How many times have we tried to make things fit just because “it would be nice”, or “it looks so great on me”, or even “but I like her, she’s pretty”.

Sometimes we make things fit, like jobs, because it is such a great company with which to work, or it is in a great city and we have always wanted to live there.

I’ve had relationships that didn’t fit. Have you? We were two perfectly well adjusted individuals, we liked each other, there was an attraction to each other, but for several unexplainable reasons we just didn’t “fit” together. The chemistry, the Karma, the charisma was all wrong.

Just because we were male and female didn’t mean we would automatically fit.

My friend KJ went to work recently with two different color shoes on. They both fit his feet, but they didn’t “fit” from a fashion standpoint.

I recently re-read the book Your Natural Gifts by Margaret Broadly. This book tells the story of the Johnson O’Connor Research Foundation, whose sole purpose is to test individuals and help discover their natural gifts and what they are most gifted to do. Mrs. Broadly relates numerous examples of people finding their bliss after chasing dead-end dreams for years.

In one instance she tells of a man who followed in his father’s surgeon footsteps and was a miserable failure because he lacked the critical skill of finger dexterity. That is a huge example of trying to “make it fit just because it fits.”

When it’s a natural fit, you’ll know it. You’ll feel a calmness, an inner assurance of “this is so right.”

I hope you find people, experiences, books and thoughts that fit perfectly into your life.

In closing, I want to leave you with this thought, but it doesn’t fit.

“I will stick no pearl up my nose before its time.” (with apologies to Orson Wells and Paul Masson Wines)

So I’ll just say this …

Just Because It Fits Doesn’t Mean It Fits!