Resistance is Futile

Faramarz Hidaji
Nov 11
4 min read

For thirty years, I carried a small, unconscious ritual: whenever life felt unpleasant or rough, my left hand would drift to a scar on my scalp, picking it like a worry stone. Such habits are what author and activist Aneela Idnani calls a "Body-Focused Repetitive Behavior" - a way of tuning out when one is worried, anxious, or just bored. This tic would surface during tax season, in the silence after a call about a family member's struggles, or in the fluorescent 3 am blur of another ED shift. This past weekend, the habit cropped up on a drive with my wife. Usually she ignores it, but this time, the intensity with which I was scratching drove her to intervene. Discovered like a naughty child, I stopped momentarily, secretly hoping she would look away so I could resume picking. I realized that I had not had ANY impulse like this for the past three days. What had been different?

Sailing Alaya

Her name is Alaya - a 25 foot Com-Pac sailboat with an electric inboard motor and an old-school tiller instead of a steering wheel. The entire past weekend, my wife and I took sailing lessons, earning our ASA101 certification, and sleeping three nights on Alaya at a marina in Oriental, North Carolina. From the moment I gripped her tiller, something shifted. I looked up to notice wind filling her sails to the top of the mast, which seemed impossibly close to puffy white clouds. Her sails and the clouds were exactly the same color, backdropped by a radiant blue sky. Seated on the windward side of the cockpit, I gazed around, taking in what were all new experiences for me. Alaya heeled away from the wind, hoisting me a few feet higher than the other side of the deck. As her hull silently and gently sliced through the water below, my hand on the tiller felt every ripple and wave. An electric sensation rose up my back as I felt the entire experience at once. I had become part of a living circuit: sky to sail to boat to body to tiller to rudder to water. There was no gap, no delay - just pure, unbroken flow. I wasn't steering the boat. I was being steered - by the wind, by the water, by the moment itself. A sailboat, after all, works best when all of these elements are in harmony. For my part, I allowed this energy to flow through me without resistance. The result? 5000 lbs of wood and fiberglass and three humans on board were carried forward, seemingly magically, as far as we wished to go.

In that flow, the picking stopped. Not through willpower, but through absence of need. There was no place for yesterday's regrets or tomorrow's fears. Only this gust, this heel, this correction. When the boat luffed, I eased the main. When we fell off, I pulled her in. The boat spoke, I listened. The world narrowed to the sound of water against the hull and the feel of the tiller in my palm. I became a conduit, a wire carrying current from sky to sea.

Land Sickness

A resistor is a part of an electric circuit that drops voltage, reducing the force of electricity. There is a trade-off: resistors create heat. The action of a resistor in an electric circuit is an apt metaphor for struggling against life's flow. The "heat" in life is anxiety, regret, worry, shame, anger. For three days as we sailed, I lived without resistance. Then came the drive home.

We left Alaya tied securely at our slip, packed up, and headed back towards reality. One hour into the drive, my hand lifted to the back of my head, the circuit broken by the to-do list, worries about responsibilities waiting for me at home. The mind filled with static, and the old reflex returned. But now I understood: the habit wasn't the problem. Resistance was.

On the water, I had welcomed everything. A gust that heeled us over. A lull that left us becalmed. My wife's laugh as I awkwardly backed Alaya into the slip like a baby taking his first steps. No desire to control. No need to fix. Just presence. Author Michael Singer calls this "letting it through." I had lived it - fully, in a whole body experience from wind to water.

Back home, the world is a friction machine. I resist the traffic. I resist the paperwork. I even resist the quiet, filling it with digital noise. Each resistance creates the heat - the hand to the scalp, the knot in the stomach, the 3 AM wake-ups. I try to micro-manage life instead of moving with it. I grip the steering wheel like it owes me something.

Days after returning home, I still feel Alaya's sway - a gentle rocking sensation even when I stand still. Our instructor called this "land sickness." It's not vertigo. It feels more like a grounding. A reminder that the water is always moving, the wind always blowing.