No one makes any effort to achieve a goal without the perceived presence of opposition thereto. After all, if there was nothing standing between you and the desired end, it would already be realized.
No one undertakes to change what they are unless they also have resistance to making any such effort. Everything any creature is instinctively driven to do has its natural resistance; all that is viable remains so through the conflict of opposing forces.
Men eat to combat hunger; rest to overcome tiredness; fuck to defeat arousal; even life itself has its enemy of death. Simply: if there is no opposition to what is desired, there will be no desire in the first place, so whatever it is that a man wants, he can be assured of resistance to him obtaining it.
Everything has its enemy. From a physically-based view, this is unquestionably true, but even an eyelash, there beyond, and it becomes laughable.
The religious speak directly of, “The Enemy”: Satan, Lucifer; The Devil, the personification of all The Forces Of Evil which oppose all of their desires for goodness, and Godliness. Philosophers and Humanists see this as a never ending battle between truth and error, propriety and incivility. Everyone perceives this at their personal level as a ceaseless struggle between themselves and their wants, and the rest of humanity. For the most part, it is in their way.
No matter what you want to do – somebody’s always trying to stop you.
Thus be the simple view of things.
J.