Stop Fighting

Chile. July. As far away as it gets. The landscape is bare, the wind carries nothing artificial, and nobody expects anything from me. I’m not here to function. For the first time in a long while, that’s not failure. It’s a decision.

I spent years fighting against myself. Against the resistance. Against the withdrawal. Against a body that resists, even though I know what would be good for it. I judged myself for it. I tried to fix myself. More discipline, more structure, more willpower. The program most people know.

It didn’t work. Not because I was too weak. But because the premise was wrong.

The premise goes like this: You’re not good enough as you are. You need to become better. Fitter, more productive, more social, more disciplined. And if you can’t manage that, something is wrong with you. This idea is sold everywhere. In books, podcasts, coaching programs, gyms, on LinkedIn. Self-optimization as life’s purpose. The human being as a project.

What nobody says: Self-optimization can be a form of violence against yourself. Not the loud kind. The quiet kind. The kind where you ask yourself every evening why you didn’t do what you planned to do. Where you treat your own resistance as a defect instead of as information.

The body that resists is not defective. It’s responding. To years of functioning in a system that never asked whether it fits. The withdrawal from people is not failure. It’s a protective reflex from someone who was available for too long. Not writing is not a block. It’s the refusal to deliver yet again.

These are not problems to be solved. They are answers to be heard. If you’re willing to listen.

In Chile, I stopped fighting. Not because I gave up. But because I understood it was never a real fight. It was a misunderstanding. I thought I had to be someone I’m not. The productive, fit, social, disciplined version of me that functions. That version exists. But it’s not the only one. And it’s not the real one.

The difference between giving up and letting go is the most important distinction I know. Giving up means: I can’t do it. Letting go means: I don’t have to. Not because it doesn’t matter. But because what I’m fighting against isn’t an enemy. It’s a part of me that wants to be heard.

The landscape in Chile helped with that. Not because it’s therapeutic. But because it’s empty. No narrative, no expectation, no demand. Just space. And in that space, there was room for the version of me that’s quiet. That’s honest. That doesn’t want to perform. That is simply there.

This sounds like an ending. It’s not. It’s a beginning. Quiet. Without a program. Without the guarantee that it works. But with the clarity that the old way definitely doesn’t.