Some people can’t live “lightly.”Small talk drains them. A calm day feels like a wasted one. Rest looks suspicious – as if it needs to be justified. Preferably with exhaustion.

Maybe you’re one of them. Maybe you’re carrying so much right now that you sometimes forget to breathe. And at the same time, somewhere underneath it all, you sense that if you put those weights down, you wouldn’t know who you are without them.

For a long time, I thought something was wrong with me. That my lack of talent for talking “about nothing” was a flaw. That my inability to relax into carefree fun was something I should eventually fix. And that constant need for depth, intensity, truth – surely some issue to unpack later.

But it wasn’t a symptom.
It was the source.

Intensity didn’t come after trauma. It was there first. Trauma just showed me one specific way to feed it – through struggle, endurance, carrying things no one should have to carry.

A High-Revving Engine

Imagine you have a high-revving engine inside you. The kind that won’t run on cheap fuel. It needs intensity, depth, full-system engagement.

Now imagine that for most of your life, the only fuel available was suffering.

Enduring. Pushing through. Proving to yourself that you can handle it.

“I carry, therefore I am.”
“I cope, therefore I matter.”
“I’m exhausted, therefore I’m alive.”

The engine isn’t the problem. The problem is that you only know one kind of fuel.

The Trap of Strength

There’s something treacherous about being strong. When you can endure a lot, the world is happy to give you more to endure. And you take it. Not because you have to, but because it’s the only way you know how to feel like yourself.

At some point, I started using “I can handle this” as proof of worth. But for that proof to work, I always needed something to handle. A closed loop.

The engine needs fuel. You only know weight. So you look for weight. You call it responsibility, adulthood, common sense. But really, it was just hunger fed with the only food you knew.

A Second Fuel

Twice in my life, I experienced intensity without struggle.

The first time was during meditation. Instead of running from pain, I entered it. Literally. I felt its vibration instead of fighting it. And then my body let go. It expanded beyond anything my mind could grasp. The universe pulsed inside me.

Nothing hurt. Not because the pain disappeared, but because it stopped hurting.

The second time was an ordinary workday. I decided to silently wish happiness to every person I thought of. By the end of the day, my heart felt larger than my body.

Both times were intense. Deep. Fully engaging. And there was no fight.

The Place the Judge Can’t Enter

I have an inner judge. Maybe you have it too. The one who says you’re not doing enough, not carrying enough, not earning your rest.

For years, I tried to defeat it, convince it, reprogram it. Then I discovered something simpler: there’s a place it can’t enter.

That place opens when I stop searching and start allowing. When I stop fighting what is and let it be. The judge doesn’t understand allowing. It only understands achieving.

So when I stop achieving, it disappears. Not quiet – absent.

You Can’t Find Depth

Here’s a paradox that took me a while to accept: searching for depth is an oxymoron. You can experience depth, remember it, long for it. But you can’t find it.

Because searching is action. And the kind of intensity that nourishes only appears in non-doing.

Maybe that’s why carrying so much doesn’t give you what you’re actually looking for. You’re seeking intensity through effort, but the one that feeds you arrives through being.

The Void

Recently, I left a job that provided endless fuel for struggle. And I entered a void.

I wake up every morning, with the judge siting on my face like an annoying fly, buzzing: you’re not working, you’re not earning, your life makes no sense.

And I answer: you’re right. I’m not working. I’m not earning. I haven’t found the meaning yet.

Yet.

That one word changes everything. The judge waits for the defence to say “but...”. I agree with the facts, but then I add, “yet.” And it goes quiet. Until tomorrow, when they hope to catch me on a bad day.

This Is Not a Repair Story

This isn’t a story about fixing yourself after trauma, returning to normal, or learning to live lightly. It’s a story about fuel.

Your need for intensity is yours. It’s not a defect or a symptom. It’s a source. And the fact that for years you only knew one way to feed it – through struggle, endurance, carrying – doesn’t mean other ways don’t exist. That’s not your fault. The world doesn’t offer many other frequencies.

Growing Through the Void

When I studied crisis psychology, I read about post-traumatic growth. That’s exactly how this feels. Those old systems – weight, struggle, proving – were built for someone smaller. For someone who didn’t know another fuel existed.

The void I was afraid of turned out to be space for expansion. Not through adding and fixing, but through subtraction and emptiness. If I tried to return to that old life now, it would feel like squeezing into jeans three sizes too small.

Maybe you’re carrying so much that you can’t imagine who you’d be without it. Maybe rest feels like a luxury. Maybe your judge is telling you that reading this is a waste of time.

I won’t tell you what to do.

I just want you to know this: the hunger you’re feeding with weight can be fed differently. And the intensity you’re chasing through endurance also exists in places where there’s no need to fight.

And maybe one day – not today, not tomorrow – you’ll enter the space the judge can’t enter.

It’s already in you.
It always was.