Floors to Mop

I mopped the mats yesterday at the end of jiu-jitsu class. 

The way class is run there is an hour of fundamental training, a small break, an hour or so of advanced training, and then some form of sparring. Before all of that kids are on the mats training as well. As you could imagine, that’s a lot of sweat and feet and hands and hair and gis. If you don’t clean the mats that you train on, daily, you’re opening up the entire gym to all sorts of germs and nastiness. Ringworm is nobody’s friend.

Technically, it’s not something I have to do. I could leave class after advanced training. I could wait until after sparring, do some cool down stretches, rush to get my gym bag, and call it a day. Invariably, I’ll stay behind and help mop the mats. I guess there’s a couple of reasons behind me doing so: I am a white belt (an advanced white belt, but that’s like saying I’m the tallest dwarf), the colored belts really don’t have to clean floors due to rank, but probably the most important reason is there’s a sense of pride I take from doing it. Maybe, mainly, because it’s something I can actually control.

I can’t control politics. I can’t control that people seem to feel they gain strength from being mean and hateful towards people who are different than them. I can’t control that people rely on memes to make points for them as opposed to logic and reason. I can’t control people say inane things or make inane arguments or falsely equivocate just for social media likes. There’s so, so much that I can’t control.

I can mop the mats, though. I can make sure the men, women, and children who use the mats the next day have a clean surface to practice jiu-jitsu on. I can immediately see the good and the value in doing that.

I’m going to be honest with you here, I could use that win. I think a whole lot of us could. Find you some floors to mop.