Last night Eric and I were talking about health, strategizing our fasting and longevity plans going forward. I told him long covid had really shifted my view: Before I thought I could optimize my body, my health, that this body was something for me to p’wn with my will. But once I had LC, my goals became more modest: I just hoped for a body that would let me function, that would allow me the ability to do at least some of what I wanted to do.

In effect, ‘I had settled’. Now, I feel sort of like it’s hard to decide what to do, where to push and where to simply accept that I live in a breakable body that limps along till it dies. Not to be fatalistic, just to understand that I can’t just enforce my will. And that even if I can, the effects are limited. Plus, there are always unforeseen consequences: Helping one thing may hurt another.

This new view of my body though, it feels a little like giving up. Like a self-betrayal given that  I have always had a bias towards acting. I will do, I will fix, I will pre-empt and prepare. Clearly this is my MO, or I wouldn’t have been having a conversation with Eric about my fasting and longevity plans to begin with. And nowhere is this tendency, to plan, to act, to do, more obvious than with my body. And yet, this tendency has had a number of unintended and undesired consequences. My health is ripe with examples:

I had a leep procedure back in my early 20s to remove precancerous cells from my cervix.  When the cells were discovered, I was given a choice, wait and see if the dysplasia goes away or have the surgery. The idea of waiting, doing nothing, was unbearable, I wanted to act, to do, not ‘sit around a wait’ to get cancer. But the surgery left a scar and I have had cervical issues since. Ironically, now adays, guidelines have changed and women under 25 aren’t even recommended to get screenings– apparently dysplasia at a young age is super common and generally goes away on its own. If only I had ‘done nothing’ and waited…

Then of course was the case of the unbroken teeth that I decided to have crowned in order to prevent future cracks. The procedure itself cracking a tooth that ultimately needed a root canal and worse, exposing me to mercury that is likely at the heart of many of my current breathing issues and environmental sensitivities.

Even with long covid, I couldn’t just wait, give myself time to heal. In fact, I had been getting better, but not fast enough, not the NOW I wanted. I was worried I shouldn’t just wait and let the disease take its course, I worried I had excess inflammation I should SOLVE. The steroids I took to solve it ended up making things much worse and were really what kicked me into LC as opposed to just prolonged healing times. 

Eric pointed out that I am an anxious person. Acting NOW sooths, me. It is an outlet for my anxiety. I pointed out however there is a deeper underlying view, otherwise I wouldn’t just find the act of acting soothing. The fact that I do points to my belief that my actions will effectuate good outcomes, at least better ones than doing nothing at all. At the heart of it is a mistaken belief of my own control, my own prowess, my own ability to p’wn — if not the universe than at least my own body.

Its hubris, grounded in my blind faith in myself, in my belief that I am special and that I can bring some resource –smarts, money, will, preparation, knowledge –to the table that gives me an advantage, that lets me one-up the world. One-up this breakable 4e body.

Yesterday, I was reflecting on how easy it is to see other people’s blind spots, the places they lock themselves in, put boxes on their head, trap themselves with their own beliefs. Isn’t this yet another example of my own? I am so convinced my actions have the power to bring about good outcomes, so convinced that not acting is a risk, that I trap myself into acting without regard for the consequences and risks. I almost always see waiting, not acting, as the worse option even though my own life shows me ample cases where waiting probably would have had better outcomes. This is again me, locking myself in, my sense of identity, the need for control, throwing away the key.

Why do I do this? Why am I so deeply uncomfortable with uncertainty, with the wait and see, with the actual nature of the world, that I am always trying to get ahead of it, find some way to mitigate the impacts of uncertainty, of impermanence that I find unpleasant. The real reason is that I fail to understand karma. I have the mistaken belief that it is somehow I, The Great Alana, that is in the driver’s seat of this body, this life, this ‘fate’ (i.e. continual stream of happenings) I call my own. Until I see karma for what it is, the absolute law of this world, I will always be trying to beat it. Afterall, I believe it is something beatable. And so, whether it is with action, or inaction, I will always be trying to game, to win, to fix a world that isn’t broken anywhere but in my own mind, expending energy and suffering trying to force that which will never yield to me.