Monk mode has been good for me. I hit my lowest resting heart rate since starting to track it, and I’ve leaned out around 9 lbs (4kg). Routine aside, the last months have been dynamic.
Building on my summer withdrawal from dating, I’ve gone full monty and deliberately cut out all dating dynamics. My last relationship was probably the first time I was not only in love but also clear about wanting a future and family with that person. It took me two years to realize how deeply that vision had taken root, and how afraid I became of losing it. From that mindset, I pushed myself to get out there and re-create it. It’s been a relief to remove the pressure and focus entirely on myself. The challenge has been seeing the ways I’ve made love play too many roles in my life, and at times used it as a palliative and crutch.
My health investigation also took a turn. I’ve spent the last years pursuing two leading hypotheses—airway/breathing issues and Lyme disease—but one question kept gnawing at me. If these are conditions I’ve had for decades, why did dozens of symptoms suddenly appear or dramatically worsen in 2019-2020? In particular, why has my nervous system been stuck in hypervigilance since then? In August, Dr. Sergei Azzolino asked me something no one else had: have I suffered a major head injury? The answer, of course, is yes. In 2019, during a long-distance cycling event, another rider cut me off, clipping my front wheel at high speed. I flipped over my handlebars and landed on my head, shattering my helmet. After being immobilized and taken to the ER, I walked out of the hospital “miraculously unscathed.” Or… maybe not? All these years, I’ve been muttering to myself that something is wrong with my brain, but I never connected the dots. I now have a third hypothesis to pursue. This line of inquiry is just beginning, but you can pray with me that it leads somewhere useful.
🔹 WTF is surrender?
From love to health, perhaps my main dojo these last few years has been the tension between determination and surrender.
For me, determination has been the crown jewel. Believe. Be brave. Do the thing. Learn. Change. Take dogged action until the thing yields.
This orientation has served me well. Most of us could stand to apply more of it, myself included.
But what happens when you pour everything into getting something you want and still fail? There’s the pretty version of the story where you feel relieved—you did your best. I've never regretted giving my all to something, even if it didn't lead where I hoped.
But there’s a darker turn, too: confronting the limits of our agency can make us feel painfully powerless.
I’m reminded of stories of athletes who finally achieved a lifelong dream of competing in the Olympics, only to fall into depression for years after disappointing results.
For me, it’s been scavenging for crumbs of progress during a health crisis now in its seventh year. Or wanting to build a life with someone, but discovering that determination alone wasn’t enough.
This has been a difficult lesson for me because I am, constitutionally, a Plan A person. I figure it out.
But lately, life has pushed me into a deeper inquiry: How do I respond when I’ve exhausted my means?
Do I just give up? Focus elsewhere?
But I don’t seem built that way.
In my experience, when we truly want something, our psyches demand that we act.
Sure, we can try to repress the desire—stash it in some hidden corner of our minds, labeled with the lie “I don’t want this.” For me, this usually leads to anxiety and regret.
So the question is: What do you do when you can’t do anything, but must do something?
This puzzle has led me to an unexpected experiment for someone raised in a secular, science-loving culture:
Prayer.
I had always thought prayer was for religious people—folks who, through some magical process, came to believe in a benevolent, all-powerful Creator. A year-round Santa Claus for grownups.
But maybe I was wrong.
What does a cat do when it’s filled with cat angst? It scratches something. I think prayer is a little like this, for humans—an enlightened scratching post. Prayer is an explicit acknowledgment that I want things, but I am not fully in control.
It is agency and surrender rolled into one repeatable action.
And here’s where it gets really interesting: What happens when that acknowledgment becomes a practice?
Based on my experience, one possible result of this process is something I can only describe as faith—a recognition that, even when I bring every shred of determination to the goals in my heart, I am still collaborating with forces infinitely larger than my own agency.
It might begin as: “Please give me what I want.”
Then evolve into: “Please show me what to do.”
And plausibly land on: “Not my will, but Yours.”
I used to think that you needed faith in order to pray. But this could be backwards. In my limited experience, the practice of prayer actually cultivates faith—helping me move from fear of not getting what I want toward curiosity about where life will lead me, and trust that I will be okay.
And—call me crazy—giving this mystery a name (“God” seems fine) and treating it with a sense of reverence might lessen our resistance to it.
All my life, I’ve tended to see religious belief as a small-minded way to avoid dealing with the unknown. Now, I’m not so sure. The opposite also seems plausible: a believer could be someone with a healthy, cultivated relationship to the unknown, and a set of rituals, stories, and language that help make that possible.
Whatever the metaphysics may be, I’ve learned a lot about surrender these past few years. I’ve been able to set my love life aside, even while partnership remains important to me. In my chronic health journey, I'm more able to pursue the next promising avenue without needing immediate evidence of progress.
Ultimately, the lesson is simple: Ideally, we go for what we want with everything we’ve got. But we all meet with failure, loss, and immutable limits. Maybe surrender belongs at the beginning of the process, and not only at the end.
Love,
Taylor
Reading 📚— Advanced Energy Anatomy by Carolyn Myss, The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss