In the “Low”
In 2015, when I was sharing a 100 sq. ft. room and a twin bed with a flatmate in Bombay, she taught me the yes game.
“You just don’t say no,” she explained. In my memory, this conversation happened over rum and cokes at Yacht, a greasy bar by the sea, around eleven in the morning. One of us had suggested going into our tiny ramshackle nonprofit office a little late, or just whenever we felt like it. “No matter how crazy or scary the idea is, you don’t say no. You keep yourself open to all of it.”
Over the next few weeks, I dutifully played this game. It was my only conviction; I was in the midst of a broken relationship and an unstable career. It turned my feeling of powerlessness into something thrilling in its anger, and its joy. I followed the instruction into all sorts of trouble, but it didn’t strike me at the time of that conversation that we were already, in
