So it occurred to me that maybe that’s my only purpose on this Earth, to ease the suffering of at least a small handful of people. Nothing fancy, nothing glorious. While sucky, loneliness is only one of the multitude of varieties of suffering available on this planet, and it is certainly nowhere near the worst. I guess. That’s how I get myself through the day, at least.

It also occurred to me that there is only one way to relieve suffering, and that is by removing the thing that is causing suffering. So if I suffer because I do not get what I want, the relief comes not in getting what I want, but in removing my want in the first place. Or as has been stated more eloquently than this by wiser minds: all desire leads to suffering.

Even if it is the human condition to seek companionship. To share my hopes and my fears, my aspirations, my ambitions, my shame, my failures with another person who actually gives a shit. Even if this is the condition in which I have been created. If this want shall never be fulfilled, then the only way to stop suffering is stop wanting.

It’s so much easier to write it down than to actually live it.

I have been concentrating very hard on the Art of Not Wanting, and despite all my effort, my brain is still wrapped around a lot of crazy and insane ideas that are completely out of my control. My stomach gurgles with the sound of reflux, and I get bouts of epigastric abdominal pain. I can’t sleep very well. My eating habits have become even more unhealthy than before, which I didn’t think was possible.

Maybe it’s just depression.

But I’m clearly doing something wrong. I thought I understood the concept that desire is the root of all suffering. I thought it followed that if you inhibit your desire, you will stop suffering, but clearly this is not the case.

And then it hit me. I haven’t really eliminated my desire.

The fact that I’m OK with the way things are, and I’m OK if things don’t change means that my desire is now merely more subtle.

I realized that I want things not to change.

And that is an impossible thing.

The universe *is* change. What Einstein taught us is that the Universe is not just “there.” It is “there-ing.” It is an active, dynamic state of flux.

All things change.

So the idea is going to be simply to roll with the punches and go with the flow. It’s easier to rhyme than actually do, but at least things are a little bit clearer, and maybe I can actually get a decent night of sleep.

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

‘But sir,’ it squealed, ‘I just heard on the sub-ether radio report. It said you were dead….’
‘Yeah, that’s right, I just haven’t stopped moving yet.’
—Zaphod Beeblebrox from *The Restaurant at the End of the Universe*

The May Grey 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.

I thought, oh God, my chance has come at last!
But then a strange fear gripped me and i just couldn’t ask
—”There is a Light That Never Goes Out” by the Smiths

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.

To everything—turn, turn, turn
There is a season—turn, turn, turn
and a time for every purpose under heaven.
—”Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There is a Season)” by the Byrds

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 have finally found a synonym for my embryonic philosophy tha I’ve been calling “The Art of Not Wanting.” Akin to Hindu and Buddhist ideals (where desire brings about suffering),voluntary simplicity is a lifestyle that eschews the excesses of the modern and post-modern era. It has significant bearing on the contemporary environmentalist movement as well as with its intersection with Neomarxism.

But the quote that struck me was how an Amazon reviewer of the book describing this kind of lifestyle stated that “using a public hospital” was among their list of things that would not be considered “viable stylishness.”

First of all, yeah, maybe this kind of lifestyle is impossible for the late 20-something/early 30-something white hipster living in the sophisticated metropolis to contemplate, but even people-of-color who grew up in upper middle class families are familiar with the concepts of being thrifty, simply from hearing stories of their forebears. While I personally don’t know the feeling of abject poverty, my immigrant parents certainly do, and the way they live their lives reflect this, non-withstanding the (now) dual six-figure incomes.

Secondly, probably 90% of the world lives relatively cheaply with at least some style; this kind of comment is, sadly, symptomatic of colonialist elitism.

Thirdly, unless you actually work in health care, you have no idea what you’re talking about with regards to municipal hospitals. While no doubt many of them are stinking cesspools temporarily housing ne’er-do-wells with no chance of survival, pretty much all of them are teaching hospitals, often attached to some rather well known universities. While they may not always be able to afford the technological bells and whistles, they generally practice cutting-edge evidence-based medicine, something that many private practice docs working at community hospitals scoff at despite the rigorous proof that it improves outcomes and cuts costs. In medicine, newness and shinyness does not necessarily equal better health care, and it’s really disturbing that very few people outside of health care actually understand that.