Every Fight Ends in Chile

As far away as possible. I know this place very well. I have been there many times. And it always sent me home a different person than the one who arrived at the beginning of the trip. This time it should be no different. The barren landscape, the wind that had no name the way storms do in Europe, where each one is named differently and the meteorologists call them by those names. There the wind has no name because nobody gives it one. Because nobody bothered. Why would they. Nobody expects anything from this wind. And so it expects no name from us either. Even though it often blew harder than many a heavy storm front rolling in from the North Sea across Europe.

I had no names in my luggage and I was not there to think about anything in particular. I knew I was visiting my family and good friends I had not seen in far too long. Who never change though. So I did not need to function there. Everyone functions there in their own way, so it was enough that I only functioned at the most basic level.

I had spent far too many years trying to function or to push even further. Fighting against myself. Against resistance, against the retreat into stillness, against my body that fights back even though I know what would be good for it. I judged myself for it and kept trying to repair myself. Through discipline, more discipline and still more discipline. Until my willpower was spent and the program, which many also know well because they told me so, stopped working, and that was not my fault or anyone else’s.

There is more behind it. And everyone knows it too. It is sold to you everywhere: you are not good enough the way you are. Get fitter, more productive, more social and of course with more discipline than you are currently able to muster. In books, podcasts, coaching programs, gyms and on LinkedIn or better yet Instagram, everything is laid out for how things should work. There every conceivable form of self-optimization, no matter how obscene, is offered as the only legitimate life purpose, non-negotiable and ready for purchase. Optimize or die. What they rarely tell you though: self-optimization can be a quiet form of violence against yourself. It is not in any criminal register and it rarely causes outrage. It is subtle violence, characterized by the kind where you ask yourself every evening why you once again did not do what you set out to do. With that disappointed undertone you adopt the narrative and convince yourself again with the sharp logic of the self-help crowd that you should treat your own resistance as a defect rather than a signal.

A body that fights back is reacting. After years of functioning in a system that never asked you whether everything is alright and whether you really want this. Then the people around you who tell you, I do not let myself get caught up in this madness and I do things completely differently. He is just smarter. You look at him and realize he is even more self-optimized than would be optimal for me. My reflex: get out of here. Retreat is a protective reflex of someone who looks too closely and makes himself available for everything and everyone. That would not be a problem if you understood it as an answer that you take seriously when you are truly ready.

Chile is that kind of retreat. For the moment when it happens again and you are well and truly fed up. This time really and truly. Because Chile does not show you anything new. This time I understood immediately upon arrival that I was never fighting a real fight but rather against a great misunderstanding. I seriously thought I had to be someone I am not. A second version of me that always functions or rather wants to show that it functions. That this version exists, I have known for a long time. But it is not the only one.

The other one grapples with this fine distinction between giving up and letting go. Giving up means I cannot do it. Letting go on the other hand means I do not have to. What I am fighting against is not an enemy at all. It is the part of me that finally wants to be heard again.

Chile always helps me. The landscape is empty but it is stronger than the wind. That is character. Character that has no expectations but leaves room. Infinite room. Enough for the version of me that is quiet because it does not want to perform. For me it is therefore never an ending but always a beginning. Without a program and without any guarantee that something will work. At least not optimally. Because this version of me works perfectly fine. For me. Not always for others. But for me. How do I get rid of the other version of me when I set off on the journey home.