I don’t believe in optimization
I don’t believe in optimization.
By now we’re all familiar with the promises (thank you, manosphere podcasts) and exactly where and how to buy the gizmos (LMNT discount codes).
PEAK PERFORMANCE!
AMAZING 💩!
HARD BODY!
At first take, the quest may be appealing. Why wouldn’t you follow the steps, especially easy steps, or steps you can easily purchase, to achieve ideals so engrained they feel both personal and personally pleasurable?
Well I believe part of you already knows…
The quest for optimization is straight out of a fairy tale.
An impossible set of instructions bestowed on a naive hero by a crabby king. A curse cast by a wicked witch.
At age 27, having slept 9 hours and eaten 4 eggs for breakfast, having climbed two days on and one day off for the last 6 weeks, you will at last be granted one 24-hour window in which you will climb your hardest climb. After 6 more weeks of regimented training, you may be granted one more day to succeed, as long as it doesn’t rain. Or it’s too hot. Or it’s too cold. Or you haven’t eaten any cookies. Or your cat doesn’t die. Or you don’t have any feelings, preferences or desires outside of your optimization program.
No optimization, no princess, no kingdom.
Optimization centers individual accomplishment as the only possible reward and creates a very, very narrow set of conditions where that reward can be redeemed.
Optimization is an ever-ready escape hatch from personal responsibility. “Well, I took at the last bolt because I didn’t go to bed at 9:30 last night and my morning meditation got cut short by a car alarm.”
Then there’s the built-in and destructive lie that amongst 8 billion humans there is an ideal age, weight, brain or any other “trackable” trait that allows human dreams to come true. Because this ideal actually doesn’t exist, chasing it will always, always result in feeling like a failure. You’ll never get to state that doesn’t exist, if you do you’ll be there alone, AND the journey will suck.
At best, optimization champions bland homogenization. At worst, a well-guarded opportunity for only very few amongst us.
⬆️optimization is a prison
No perfect amount of sleep, vitamins, meditation, electrolytes, protein, rest or pounds on your pretty bones will dam the infinite tide of influence shaping your life’s unfolding.
And why would you want it to?
Isn’t there some part of you that achingly yearns for something to trust and rely on outside of pre-packaged supplements, even if it’s not currently within your grasp?
Fairy tales were invented to apply meaning and value to painful, universal human experiences like doubt, emptiness and uncertainty (wow, sounds a lot like climbing). And fairy tales remind us of the stone cold truth that heroes never win because they follow the instructions. Heroes win because they commit to Love.
⚔️❤️🔥⚔️
There is an aspect of life, wait, I mean climbing, I mean life, that is verrrrryyyyy spoooky. This aspect is so completely uncontrollably unpredictably fearsome, that you are tempted to sacrifice all its allure and potential just to say you ate the right vitamins.
…
Yes I am, I am talking about the magic of Love.
I will share more about its chaos next month.
P.S.
Optimization is NOT:
💦Healthy, full, indulgent recovery after you’ve asked a lot of your body in the areas of work, climbing, emotions or fun.
💦Discipline: repeatedly revisiting the pain of harboring unborn dreams and committing to the slow and painstaking process of acquiring the skills to bring these dreams to life.
⬆️sometimes full recovery is necessary