mahiwaga

I don’t know. Maybe S. is right. Maybe the last 3 years 10 months have finally caught up to me.

The May Gray creeping outside my window doesn’t help a bit. Today is the kind of day that makes me want to just crawl back into bed and go back to sleep.

I think the worst part of this is that I really don’t have anything to be miserable about. If I think about all this rationally, calmly (hah!), I’m doing OK. I have a (sort-of) job for at least part of next year. The last two blocks of my residency should be pretty (relatively) cake.

It’s just this oppressive sense of time running out. Time waits for no one. Great.

Every day that passes I start to feel like my universe is contracting. Every day that I don’t act, my choices become narrower. The possibilities diminish.

If I don’t do it now, it’ll never happen.

But then I stop to think about it. What exactly is it that is running through my fingers like sand? Nothing but vapor, really. Wisps of probability. All of them possibly infinitesimal.

I’m over-thinking all of this, really.

How do you lose something that you don’t have yet, and may not ever have?

I’m starting to think about what I do have. Family. Friends. They are real. And while none of us can predict the future, and I knock on wood right now to keep misfortune at bay, I know that they’ll be there. Certainly longer than any of these fairy tales that keep running through my head.

In other words, while loss is a real possibility—we are all mortals doomed to die, after all—they’ll always live inside of me. Memories of shared conversations, trips taken together. Random meetings and crossings in this wide world of ours. The randomness exchanged over the ether, by e-mail, IM, or SMS.

This is not something that I can easily lose. It’s not something that can be easily taken away from me.

Which leads me to a self-styled koan that may or may not make sense:

Whatever you need, you have it.
Whatever you don’t have, you don’t need it.

There is a geeky acrostic from computer programming that seems applicable at the moment: YAGNI. You ain’t gonna need it.

It is something I have, I suppose, struggled with my entire life: the idea of just letting something go, because there’s nothing I can do about it at this moment. I have spent many sleepless nights trying to fathom things that weren’t meant to be, things that I knew at the time couldn’t possibly happen.

So it all comes down to the Art of Not Wanting, as usual. Desire causes suffering, and I’m just tired, so very tired.

I first found this test (or a variation of it) back in 2002 while I was in the throes of studying for Step 1 of the USMLE and dealing with the fact that E didn’t like me in That Way™. I’m not sure if this test is even vaguely validated by any sort of study, but it’s entertaining nonetheless. I can already tell that it’s highly susceptible to the Forer effect, but whatever. You can find meaning wherever you want to. That’s what the human brain does, after all.

V’s Existing Situation

Uneasy and insecure in the existing situation. Needs greater security and a more affectionate environment, or a situation imposing less physical strain.

V’s Stress Sources

Wishes to be independent, unhampered, and free from any limitation or restriction, other than those which he imposes of himself or by his own choice and decision.

V’s Restrained Characteristics

Willing to participate and to allow himself to become involved, but tries to fend off conflict and disturbance in order to reduce tension.

Egocentric and therefore quick to take offense, leaving him rather isolated in his attachments.

The situation is preventing him from establishing himself, but he feels he must make the best of things as they are.

V’s Desired Objective

His need to feel more causative and to have a wider sphere of influence makes him restless and he is driven by his desires and hopes. May try to spread his activities over too wide a field.

V’s Actual Problem

Feels restricted and prevented from progressing; seeking a solution which will remove these limitations.

It all comes down to this: how much does this matter to me? If I can’t survive without it, then I’ve got to reel in all my lines and just aim straight for the target. Do-or-die. No quarter given.

If I fail, I may as well fail spectacularly, with explosions and flares and other incendiary catastrophes.

And if it doesn’t matter that much to me? Then I’ve got to just let it ride. Let the current take me to wherever I gotta go, and don’t sweat it. I’ve lost far more things than I’ve ever picked up. I’ve missed way more chances than I’ve ever taken. This is how life as a human being is. You make a choice, a whole branch of the decision tree becomes inaccessible to you. We are not only mortal, we are limited to experiencing a single reality.

The thing is, there’s no such thing as 100%. Even if I go on my Death Star run and let the Force run through me, there’s no reason why my torpedos should actually slide down that shaft and hit the reactor core. More likely than not, I’m going to get shot down by Darth Vader and go out in a brief burst of flame.

And I’m tired of crashing all the time.

Why I imagine these sorts of things as some kind of battle actually disturbs me. Why is it that I can’t look at winning a woman’s heart from a sane point-of-view?

Everything gets twisted, spun around, distorted. The world slips out from under me. I’m operating under an alternate form of reality. The rules of the universe that I’ve come to rely on have changed entirely.

Anything that I thought made sense no longer does.

I don’t know. Maybe I can do this Friend Zone™ thing yet one more time. What’s one more time? No one ever died from being rejected. I mean, there have been plenty of people who have killed themselves because of it, but that’s an entirely different story.

I dig this quote a lot, actually: “Why can’t I set my heart on a possible thing?” It’s from The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin, who also wrote the Earthsea Cycle.

I’ve used it quite a bit, in fact.

1. The Art of Not Wanting Revisited
2. To Wish Impossible Things
3. When the Evening Falls

Why do I always jump to unwarranted conclusions, when all I should do is ride the wave, and let it take me where it will? Even if this all ends badly, can’t I just live in the moment for once?

Why do I insist on always dissecting my happiness until it unravels into jittery nervousness, panic, and raving insanity?

Why can’t I just stop thinking, and actually start doing?

I really need someone to give me a swift kick in the ass. Times like these, I miss Bram and Ben severely.

Just a small kick. Enough to get me over the threshold. I’m like a domino ready to fall.

Oh, life on the precipice is sometimes quite nauseating. Just jump already. Just jump. Argh.