Yesterday, I began to learn Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I tell people the reason I am doing so is in case I ever need to write about characters involved in hand to hand combat. As someone who aspires to be an author, this is a very real possibility, and no amount of reading on the internet or elsewhere could allow me to understand the ebb and flow of two circling, interlocked fighters or the pressure and tension of the individual holds and joint locks, or feel of the whole-body struggle of a grounded grapple. I could try, but I probably couldn't get any more detailed than the relatively superfluous description given above.
For some people, doing Jiu-Jitsu in order to describe Jiu-Jitsu may not matter, but I know that I if I want convey the essence and the aura and the feeling of what goes on in a fight, it sure would be helpful for me to have experienced it myself. Though I may not be receiving an education in becoming a writer, I will not hesitate to educate myself with any and all knowledge and experiences that will enhance my ability to write. At some point, I will also have to make a point of learning a bit of karate so that I understand the strikes and blows of fighting in addition to the holds, takedowns, and grapples.
I wrote that I tell people that I am learning Jiu-Jitsu so that I can be a better writer. While this is certainly true, the decision was just as much influenced by the fact that I have wanted to do martial arts since I was a child, but my parents would never let me take lessons. To this day, I don't fully understand why they wouldn't, except that lessons might have been expensive, and they probably didn't want me running around hitting things (though I doubt that I would have, even if I had been taught how).
I found it interesting, though, that the very first thing that we began to learn was how to fall. It makes sense, really, that we would learn how to fall before we learned how and began to perform grapples and take downs: learning how to fall properly prevents us from getting hurt. That we learned how to fall, however, is not a particularly interesting fact, even though I said it was. What is noteworthy is that we did not begin by learning how to avoid falling. A veteran practitioner of Jiu-Jitsu is not expected never to fall. In fact, one cannot be good at Jiu-Jitsu without being quite good at falling--falling is not only a skill developed even as one practices to reach to a high degree of proficiency, it is a skill necessary to compete and perform safely at high levels of difficulty.
Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. - Confucius
The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The greatest accomplishment is not in never falling, but in rising again after you fall. - Vince Lombardi
Maybe life is a bit like Jiu-Jitsu. Within the context of a comparison between falling literally and falling metaphorically, I would suggest it is very much so. In life, it would be great if we never fell down. As nice as it would be, that is not how life works. By its very nature, we will fall, and we will probably fall often. Our goal, then should not be learning how never to fall, for we will almost certainly fail in the endeavor; our goal instead should be learning how to fall, so that when we do, for we will, the fall will not break us, so that when we fall, we will be able to get back up, and so when we fall, we will be able to enter again into the struggle to win and to survive.
If we focus only and solely on never falling, when we do fall, we will not be prepared to deal with the force of the collision, both when we hit the ground and when our opponents land on us. We will break, we will be pinned, and we won't know how to get up or how to recover. Knowing how to fall is thus the key, and learning to fall ought to take greater priority in our lives. We cannot be proficient at life without knowing how to fall, and we cannot know how to fall without falling--probably repeatedly.
Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again. - Vincent Van Gogh
Though I previously said it would be nice if we never fell down in life, in Jiu-Jitsu, if you're still at the point where you are not yet falling, or are falling so lightly and softly that you don't need to know how to fall effectively, then you really haven't come very far, and you're hardly practicing Jiu-Jitsu. In a way, if life were so smooth and streamlined that there were no problems or challenges that caused us to fall, then we'd hardly be living at all. Some of the best feelings and greatest moments in life are when you stand up and step forward and take down an obstacle that has repeatedly thrown you to the ground. We succeed when we stand back up, for a man who never falls is one who has never been adequately challenged; in short, he cannot be conquer that which was not obstacle, and he cannot be victorious in the face of no adversity.
And why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up. - Alfred Pennyworth, Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins
In Jiu-Jitsu, falling correctly involves rolling the length of your back on the ground as you fall backwards and slapping the ground with your extended arms and palms just as your shoulders hit the ground. There are other ways to fall in different directions, but this is the most basic method. The rolling along the back and the use the underside of the entire arm will both spread out the force of the impact and prevent localized force from seriously damaging any one part of the body. If you land on your back or your wrist, you risk injury; properly falling, however, both minimizes injury and prepares you to get back up: you are not as dazed and are ready to push against the ground to regain your position.
Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy. - 2 Nephi 2:25
In life, we have to learn how to fall. When we inevitably do, the last thing we want is a broken wrist from flailing our arms backward ineptly to catch our metaphorical fall. When we hit the hard ground of our trials, we must push off of it to break our fall and to begin to propel ourselves forward; we must not concentrate the pain and force of the fall in one aspect of our lives, but must spread it out, taking the blow as a whole and rounded person with other strengths and successes to fall back upon. We must immediately consider how to get back off the ground, for we have not lost when we have only fallen, nor are we defeated when we are merely pinned--we need not tap out nor surrender our will. (Although there are times in Jiu-Jitsu where it is wise to tap out, the same does not hold true for life.) It is worth learning to avoid falling unnecessarily, and it is worth learning how to get out of pins and holds, but most importantly, it is important to learn how to fall--so the act of falling becomes just as important, for by doing is the knowledge of the action acquired.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. -Theodore Roosevelt
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