A few days after I began the antibiotics for strep, my angry, red, raw throat began to subside. Now it was my vagina’s turn. Ugghhh, the familiar burning, itching, angry pain of an antibiotic triggered yeast infection was upon me. As I waddled over to the Walgreens to get myself some Monistat, I started thinking…

Even when I can take actions to seemingly control this body, i.e. take antibiotics to cure strep, there are consequences, in this case a yeast infection. So…is that control?

I take so much pride in the moments I can make this body do, or look, as I see fit. How much joy did I take in the shapes I could make in yoga? Oh how my pride swelled looking at my beautiful self in the mirror on my wedding day. And boy-oh-boy is there sorrow, despair, embarrassment and disappointment when the wrinkles and sagging defy my botox and filler regime. Would I take such joy, or suffer such embarrassment, if I actually understood this body wasn’t in my control?

Only an idiot tethers their sense of pride to an object they can’t actually control. There is no way to build identity in something that is, for all intensive purposes, random*; wayward; that we ought to have no belief can readily show our will. It’s nonsensical. Over and over I gather evidence I don’t control this body. First strep, now yeast infection. Why don’t I learn?

As I consider this question of not learning now, in Aug. 2025, I see more clearly that I mistake influence, the ability to be a condition –even sometimes a cause – as an affirmation of self. Sure, I don’t control – I covered that topic years ago, but OBVIOUSLY, LOOK AT REALITY, I INFLUENCE. I can take antibiotics and clear an infection. Shoot shit in my face and combat wrinkles and sagging. I can work out and practice yoga everyday and the progress, the increase of strength and flexibility, is undeniable. Can’t I take pride in that? Isn’t that WHO I AM –the woman who wiggles within constraints, who overcomes obstacles, who can’t p’wn the world, but maybe can briefly hold back the ocean of entropy in my little corner of the forest?

I allow having these effects on objects to act as evidence to feed the delusion of mine-ness. But, let’s look closer about the reality this yeast infection actually illustrates: The infection is evidence that even as I am a condition effectuating an outcome I want from my body, i.e. eradication of bacteria, I still don’t control. Even as I influence, I am still subject to the nature of bodies, i.e. killing bacteria in bodies, while a boon for strep healing, leads to overgrowth of fungus and the curse of a yeast infection.

No matter what stories I tell myself about the “deep meaning” of influence on these objects has, the reality is ultimately lack of control. No matter what delusions of grandeur I allow being a cause of these objects, or the direction they take, to stir in me, reality IS cause and effect, everything is always the product of cause and effect, the seeding of further causes for further effects. This is not special, this is not identity, this is just the mundane fabric of this world. This is karma. It is meaningless.

“NOTHING BELONGS TO US EVERYTHING IS MEANINGLESS.” THIS IS HOW IT IS MEANINGLESS.

Back in the early days of contemplating self and self belonging, I stumbled upon a bit of language, a parallel I really liked: For every object I had, I claimed, there was always fine print. There were limits and liabilities. I can use this body –but it is limited by breakability, by being subject to infection. I can take antibiotics, but the script comes with liabilities, a yeast infection. Limits and liabilities are part of a contract that dictate the use of an item. I have a rental car, I can use it within the limits and liabilities the company sets-out. I have an apartment, I can use it with the limits and liabilities my lease sets out. If every single object has these fine print limits and liabilities, then it really is like LP Thoon says: The objects are here for use, I borrow them. This is not ownership, this is a rental bound by time, bound by rules.

And of all the rules (i.e. common conditions)these objects are bound to, the most relevant here is dukkha. An angry red throat, followed by an angry red vagina, this is dukkha. The stress of illness. The stress of spreading illness. The stress that illness interferes with my life, my plans. The stress that this illness portends the next, that it proves the vulnerability of this body. Dukkha, dukkha, dukka.

I run around claiming objects I don’t control, that cause me stress, that disappoint me, just for the ‘feel-good-hit’ that I get from influence. From deluding myself that influence is meaningful, that because I can be a condition or a cause, that condition-setting/causality can prove who I am, that it allows me to be, to become. This is a fool’s trade Alana: What is conditional is not self, it is not who I am. And yet I somehow think that BEING a condition can prove who I am? Being a condition is after all, in and of itself conditional. For this flimsiness I accept, invite, wallow in life-after-life of dukkha.

LOOK AT REALITY: I can be a condition, or a cause, to the extent that karma – other and past conditions and causes allow. This is the limitation in use. This is my ability to use antibiotics to treat if I can access them, if the bacteria isn’t resistant. This is my ability to heal my body, if its elements are in an arrangement where the particular antibiotics I have will return it to an arrangement that is strep infection free. And even if I am a condition or cause of getting the strep healed, I face liabilities of the cause I set to heal the body – antibiotics can trigger yeast infections. Just as there is no ownership, there is no owner either.

*I say “for all intensive purposes random” because, of course, nothing is random, everything arises based on causes. Karma is real. But from my deluded perspective, the direction objects take SEEMS random in that they don’t adhere to my desires or expectations. They don’t affirm my control