Every Fight Ends in Chile

As far away as possible. I know this place very well. I’ve been there many times. And it has always sent me home different than when I arrived at the start of my trip. This time should be the same. The barren landscape, the wind that had no name, unlike the storms here in Europe that are named differently each time and given those names by the meteorologists. There the wind carries no name because nobody gives it one. Because nobody bothered. What for. Nobody expects anything of this wind. And so it doesn’t expect a name from us. Even though it often blew stronger than many a heavy storm front that rolls in over Europe from the North Sea.

I brought no names in my luggage, nor was I there to think about anything. I knew I was going to visit my family and good friends I hadn’t seen for too long and who never change anyway. So I didn’t have to function there. Everyone there functions in their own way, so it was enough that I just functioned on the most basic level.

I had anyway burned far too many years trying to function or to push further, to fight against myself, against resistance, against the retreat into stillness, against my body that pushes back even though I know what would do it good. I judged myself for it and kept trying to repair myself. Through discipline, more discipline and even more discipline. Until my willpower was used up and the program so many people know well, because they told it to me, no longer worked, and that wasn’t my fault or anyone else’s.

Because there is more behind it. And everyone knows that too. It gets sold to you everywhere: you aren’t good enough the way you are. Get fitter, more productive, more social, and of course all of that with more discipline than you’re capable of bringing to the table. In books, podcasts, coaching programs, gyms and on LinkedIn or even better on Instagram it’s all laid out, how it should go. There, every obscene form of self-optimization is offered for purchase as the only right task in life, non-negotiable. Optimize or die. What you rarely hear: self-optimization can be a quiet form of violence against yourself. It doesn’t appear in any criminal record and rarely triggers outrage. It’s subtle violence, marked by the way you ask yourself every evening why you didn’t do what you set out to do, again. With that disappointed undertone you take on the narrative and convince yourself once more, with the sharp logic of the advisors, that you should treat your own resistance as a defect instead of a signal.

A body that pushes back reacts after years of functioning in a system that never asked whether everything is in order and whether you really want things this way. Then come the others, who tell you they don’t let themselves get infected with the madness, they do it completely differently. He’s simply smarter. You look at him and you see: he’s more self-optimized than would be optimal for me. My reflex: away from here. Withdrawal is a protective reflex of someone who looks too often and makes himself available to everyone and everything. That wouldn’t be a problem if you understood it as an answer to take seriously when you’re really ready.

Chile is such a place to withdraw to, for the moment when it’s once again too much and you’ve really had enough. This time really enough. Because Chile doesn’t show you anything new. This time I understood immediately on arrival that I was never fighting a real fight, only against a big misunderstanding. I genuinely thought I had to be someone I wasn’t. A second version of myself that always functions, or wants to show that it functions. That this version exists, I knew long ago. But it isn’t the only one.

The other one engages with this fine difference between giving up and letting go. Giving up means I can’t do it. Letting go means I don’t have to do it. That which I’m fighting against isn’t an enemy, it’s the part of me that finally wants to be heard again.

Chile helps me every time. The landscape is empty, but it is stronger than the wind. That’s character. Character that has no expectation, just leaves space. Endless space. Enough for the version of me that is quiet, because it doesn’t want to perform. That’s why, for me, it’s never an end point, but always a beginning, without a program and without any guarantee that anything works. At least not optimally. Because this version of me works perfectly well, for me, not always for others, but for me. How do I get rid of the other version of me when I set off for home?