Danger is Real

Dan from Victoria is beardless now. I don’t like it and I want him to grow it back immediately. It was so striking that I knew he had shaved it, saw him walking up, and it still didn’t register that it was him when I saw him. When I was in Victoria, Dan worked two jobs, both of which allowed him to have a beard which was full and luxurious and awesome and with his belly and smile he looked like a younger, awesome Santa Claus. He had his reasoning for shaving it, you know…employment…but my Dan in my head has a beard. I was going to do my normal thing and say “I digress,” but I can tie this in. Really, I promise.

Over the course of the evening in Victoria I had several meaningful conversations. Dan mentioned to me that he wanted some help with fitness; his idea was that he would join a gym and start and I would continue to grow my beard out in a show of solidarity. There’s a big problem with that: my wife. Miranda is happy with my beard as long as I keep my beard looking neat and trimmed. The more I grow it out, the more comments I get about my beard that I don’t want to hear on a daily basis. Growing a super long beard is out unless I’m somehow able to hypnotize my wife into forgetting what’s she’s been consistent about all the time we’ve been married.

A couple days ago, I decided to ask Dan about what I could do to help the fitness thing again. Dan shared with me that losing weight has now become a personal thing for him but understandably, taking this journey is a difficult one that makes him uncomfortable. In return, to walk with him on this journey I would need to do something that would make MEuncomfortable. Now, in fairness to myself I did ask Miranda for help in finding an answer to this. I was hoping for something that would mildly inconvenience me. Miranda couldn’t come up with something quickly enough so I did a terrible, awful thing: I was completely honest with what would make me most uncomfortable…competition in jiu-jitsu.

It’s very hard to believe that come next month I have trained jiu-jitsu for 5 years total time. The common jiu-jitsu mentality is you should compete early in your career, particularly as a white belt. If you compete as a white belt, odds are the person you’re competing against doesn’t know a lot either and you can more quickly gain an idea of what it is you do need to know. If you wait until blue belt and compete it is possible that as a brand new blue belt that the person you’re competing against is closer to purple belt than blue belt, which increases your odds of getting smashed. 

I chose early on not to compete. There was a part of me that was worried about injury. I don’t want to compete against a person who feels they’re team Cobra Kai BJJ or doesn’t care if they hurt the person across from them because they don’t have to see them on a daily basis. There was a part of me that simply didn’t care to compete. Either way, as the time passed it just became a thing in my head that I wouldn’t compete and I would focus more on helping the people around me as best as I can. I was perfectly fine with that and could be honest with myself and others in saying being a teacher means more to me than any competition without sounding like a big chicken.

Let me caveat: I don’t think if you don’t compete that you’re a chicken. You’re not. Everyone has their reasons for stepping on to a competition mat. In my opinion it’s akin to being in the Armed Forces and not seeing active combat. If you served, you served. Sometimes you don’t get a say in HOW you served. It’s more important that you did. If you get on the mats on a consistent basis that is saying a ton about who you are as a person. If you choose not to compete, I feel that’s ok.

Back to the main point here, I told Dan the thing that would make me most uncomfortable and now? Well, looks like I’m competing. I found a local competition and it looks like Feb 29 is going to be the date that I do this thing. Lots of things for me to do to prepare for this thing and I’ve already started. I let Steve, my main instructor, know of my intentions. He gave advice. I let training partners know and still have many more to tell. Most importantly, I let Miranda know. She was uncomfortable with the decision too but she supports me and told me so. Which means a lot! I could do this without her but I sure as hell didn’t want to do it without her.

…and here we are. It’s mid January. While I’ve started training the reality of the situation will magnify over time. I’m not super worried about it. In a way, I think I needed to do this to grow as a jiu-jitsu practitioner. I needed to do this to help a friend out, too. For me that's going to put any fear or discomfort I have in the rear view very quickly.

Time to train.