It’s a mystery manSome games seem entirely dangerous to play. The rules are ever changing, the stakes are high, and effort does not reliably map on to success.Towards the end of residency, I went on a couple of dates with a man I knew from medical school. I ran into him on the streetcar, he in pale blue scrubs, coming back from the children’s hospital, and me, in jeans and a scrub top, coming back from clinic. He spoke mostly about himself, mentioned he had just come out of a relationship, and asked for my number. He was going to a conference next week, but promised to call when he was back. He did. We had dinner. He continued to pursue the connection, but rather half-heartedly, hiding behind work, conferences, his busy schedule. I had seen it all before. Donning my familiar armour, I started pulling back. The last time we met up, he spoke of his ex-girlfriend. I put so much effort into my relationships and what do I have to show for it? If I put that energy into work I actually get something back. Publications, money, recognition. He scuffed his toe into the ground.Love seems to be the thing we desire and fear the most. Online grifters build entire careers on this vulnerability: buy my course, and I will teach you how to secure his love, text messages that are guaranteed to make her obsessed! By all measures, love seemed a fool’s game. Better to sink one's time in more practical pursuits, or even in scrolling. Career rejection was easily overcome, but romantic rejection? All the old ghosts came knocking at once [shame, inadequacy, abandonment] threatening to destroy what had been so carefully constructed.But what is life without love?A few months ago, I admitted an elderly patient from the emergency room. Reason for referral: overdose. She had regained consciousness by the time I went to see her. Perched at the edge of her bed, I asked point blank why she wanted to kill herself. At first, she rattled off her chronic health conditions, none of which were imminently killing her. I said nothing. Finally, she broke down. Her kids didn’t visit her. She had a granddaughter she was close to who no longer spoke to her. She was alone in a nursing home. After her previous hospital admission, she walked home in a pair of hospital slippers. No one looked up, she said, tears in her eyes. No one asked what an old woman was doing stumbling through the streets alone, wearing a pair of hospital slippers.Try as we might to suppress or keep it at bay, the desire to be loved never truly goes away. When desire comes knocking at the door, not to be ignored, we may reach for another weapon: control.Where there is fear, and a lack of trust, there is also a primal desire to control. I learned this from an eating disorder I wrestled with in my early 20’s. I feared gaining weight. I didn’t trust myself around food. I had an overwhelming need to control: calories, safe foods, the number on the scale. I was so disconnected from my internal signals that I deferred to the external for clues on when to eat, what to eat, and how much. I consumed fitness related content obsessively. When I finally did bring food into the house, it would seldom last a day. I had ignored my want—my hunger—for too long. The binges were proof that I could not be trusted, and the cycle of control began anew.What of matters of the heart? Control is waiting four days to text because he took three. Control is never letting her know where she stands. Control is not letting him know how much he means to you. Control is outsourcing what to do next, self-trust be damned.I wish I could love humans with the same wild abandon that I love animals. I can meet a dog and give him a kiss, tell him I love him, feel my heart swell. His tail wags, his eyes glisten, his ears perk up. I affect him somehow, and he’s not afraid to show it. I feel safe. I don’t need to reach for my armour. No need to pull out the weapons.There is something in the way animals love us. In farsi: به دل میشینه. It lands in the heart. It’s just honest. Maybe that’s the way we need to tread: consequences be damned.

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What comes slow lastsThings are changing much too slowly for my liking. I want my writing to be read widely. I want a tight knit community. I want to start a new clinic and I want it to be an instant success. I want to meet the love of my life. I want the seeds I am planting to show immediate signs of life.These days, I've been meditating on the following: all things in their own time.If we sit in a meadow, a butterfly may land in our palms. What if, in our haste, in our hunger, we grasp at it, crushing its wings between our fingers? What if it arrives before we can create the conditions for it to stay? And to trust that, if it chooses to fly away, we will be fine all the same?More and more, I wonder if a big life demands a big nervous system. It needs a vessel through which all things—joy, heartbreak, ecstasy, despair, fear— come to pass. The vessel has to withstand.All things in their own time. Some things land a little later, when we have finally learned how to hold them, ever so lightly, ever so gently, in our outstretched human palms.

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