I am a physician who writes.I value precision and efficiency, but also softness, beauty, and a bit of play.I like the idea of letting things be as they are. A cactus cannot will itself into a rose. They share an essence all the same.

The games we playSome games seem entirely dangerous to play. The rules are amorphous, and the stakes far too high.One morning towards the end of residency, I ran into an old acquaintance on the streetcar. I had recently recognized in myself a quality that I both hated and revered, where almost strangers handed me their tangled inwards on first pass, most often without any interest in me. As we were getting off, he finished his latest trail of thought: 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.By all measures, love seemed a fool’s game. Better to sink one's time into more practical pursuits, or even into scrolling. Career setbacks were easily overcome, but romantic rejection? That was the wave that threatened to capsize.A few weeks ago, I found myself on another stage, this time in the emergency room. I parsed through referrals and paused on the other side of the curtain where my patient was waiting. Reason for referral: overdose. She was older.Perched on the edge of the bed, I asked point blank why she wanted to kill herself. I had lost my shyness in the last year or two of practice, okay with asking uncomfortable questions and fielding horrific responses with the curiosity and neutrality of a child. 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. She had a granddaughter 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, with tears in her eyes. No one asked what an old woman was doing stumbling through the streets alone, wearing a pair of hospital slippers.So, there it was. No matter how old, the desire for love remained.How to cope, how to cope, when what you most wanted couldn't be demanded? When it took just a little bit of luck, timing, and circumstance?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 the arsenal of defenses.There is something in the way animals love us. In farsi: به دل میشینه. It lands in the heart. It’s just honest.It's hard to be honest when you're looking down the barrel of annihilation. But I suppose it's all you have.

What comes slow lastsSitting in a meadow, a butterfly may come to land. 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 hands.