A Balance of Order and Chaos
In Barcelona, Spain, a beautiful old bullfighting ring called the Plaza de toros de las Arenas now serves as a shopping mall with six floors and an open rooftop. Some years ago, I visited that rooftop with my wife, three children and another family. We strolled casually, talking and looking out over the city while the children ran around. After one long, slow circle, we gathered near the entry, and at that moment I realized my youngest daughter, seven years old at the time, was missing.
We found her not five minutes later, two floors down, scared and holding hands with a woman doing her best to assure her they’d find us. I had kept my emotions in check while sprinting to the street level and checking every exit, but once reunited, when the danger had passed, I found that I couldn’t breathe. I sucked for air as I held onto a guardrail, afraid I might vomit on the shoppers below.
[The Power of Breath: Mastering Your Emotions on the Jiu Jitsu Mat]
In an instant, my happy and well-ordered life became upended. My worst fear closed in as I ran in circles like a bull taking hits on all sides, not knowing which way to go, a grim reminder of how quickly life can turn from peaceful order to unfathomable chaos and fear.
Finding balance
Order and chaos. Civilizations have sought to represent these two sides of life for millennia. Perhaps most famously, the Yin and Yang symbol from Taoist philosophy captures this duality: darkness and light, male and female, order and chaos. How we choose to balance between the two becomes how we choose to run our lives.
Too much order, too many rules and too much sameness make our lives dull. We can’t learn anything or find new meaning living like that. It also renders us unable to face the chaos and danger that inevitably arises in life. Life on the other side, however, in constant chaos and without direction or focus feels scattered, also without meaningful progress.
For most people, nothing feels more chaotic than physical violence. Ask anyone who’s gotten robbed or assaulted, and they’ll tell you the difficulty of overcoming the initial confusion of the attack. Most of us get to live in relative peace, going about our business, enjoying our surroundings or staring mindlessly into our phones. Whether the attack comes from a random encounter in the street or from someone familiar, the effect is the same. Why is this happening? What can I do? Where can I turn?
How Jiu Jitsu gives order to chaos
Self-defense serves as a big reason many people pursue martial arts, including myself. I’d just received my black belt in karate, but I had seen some UFC fights and knew that, taken to the ground, I would be practically helpless. I also knew that the endless katas I practiced, forms with roundhouse kicks and high blocks, wouldn’t do much in a real fight where the ability to flow and adapt becomes paramount.
So I put aside my training and decided to learn how to deal with real chaos in a physical way. Two months later, I walked into Easton Training Center.
One of the things I immediately loved about Jiu Jitsu became the order it imposes on the physical battle. In it, I found a system that made sense and provided answers to basic self-defense problems.
When my instructor demonstrated a move, and I’d ask, “But what if they do this?“, I always got an answer, a way to counter that move. I learned how to stay safe, how to defend and how to escape from compromising positions.
Even when I screwed up, I could still see the organization, its structure and the order involved. Best of all, I could watch people in action, in practice or competition, even on the same mat where I trained, using these moves to defend and dominate in a physical confrontation.
Clinical psychologists say that our reality comprises two things: the things we know and everything else. Our bodies actually inform us when we feel perfectly positioned between the two, flooding the brain with dopamine as we find ourselves interested and engaged enough with something new and exciting, yet in an environment safe enough for us to take the risk. Too much risk and the body goes into panic, fight or flight mode. Not enough risk, we grow bored and uninspired.
When we find ourselves perfectly balanced between the right amount of order and chaos, our body reacts in a way that reinforces our alignment. Better yet, this practice increases the probability that we’ll do it better tomorrow.
[Between Identity and Practice: What You Put In Is What You Get Out]
Isn’t that the best description of a Jiu Jitsu mat? The perfect balance of order and chaos: a place to learn moves over and over, but with different people in a range of sizes, abilities and energy. You can challenge yourself with new moves and new opponents all the time, and if you ever find yourself in a situation that’s too much for you, you tap. You start over. You can request more pressure or less, more speed or less. You can ask for more chaos or less.
This becomes the ideal learning environment: we get the structure to pursue something new, guided by people who want us to make progress without getting hurt or discouraged. Yet, every day that we show up, we know we’ll likely find ourselves in a life-or-limb-threatening situation.
Even as the attacks on the mat only simulate the real thing, they still completely engage the mind and body as we learn, defend and fight. For this very reason, we feel so alive after class. Because we get to pursue something good for our physical, intellectual and emotional health, and we get to do it with just enough danger to keep it interesting.
Real danger in the world and real chaos in life can arise at any time. Luckily, in Jiu Jitsu, we have the opportunity to allow chaos into our lives in just the right amount and at the time of our choosing. Find the right amount of chaos to bring into your life, and balance there as best as you can. Your body and mind will let you know that you’re in the right place.
