In A Digital World, Jiu Jitsu Is The Only Thing That Seems Real
If everyone’s different, they’re the same. If they’re the same, they’re no different. Our minds are split to believe both simultaneously. Everyone really wants to be an individual — unfortunately for them — there are 8 billion souls with the same idea in mind. In believing their own uniqueness, they’ve isolated themselves. If you’re unique, you’re entitled. If you’re entitled — you’re alone — there is no empathy with the entitled. We are only really guaranteed one thing once we’ve put two feet on the floor:
Life.
If we are given anything else, then you’re not really a human, are you? The problem with a digital world is it is lifeless.Since it is lifeless, it implants a seed of thought that we too may be lifeless. If we are lifeless, then we may convince ourselves we deserve more than what we already have. You may construct yourself as you wish digitally, that is not the case in reality. You are what you are. We want to be inhuman, a dirty obsession of merging man and machine, trying to escape our fates of mortality. How can one escape this selfish dystopia? This digital escape?
Enter: Jiu-Jitsu.
The Trap Of Social Media
Since everyone wants to be an individual, it’s become very easy for social media to begin guessing what kind of people we all want to become. After all, 8 billion is a sizeable data pool to work with. If you breathe air and smile at the sun, rest assured that the corporate digitization of our beings has already stamped, labelled and packaged your very identity. Worse yet, if you’ve really made a name for yourself, it’s used as a next selling point. Everyone can try to be like you now… with that, there goes what used to be ‘you’.
Jiu-Jitsu, The Ultimate Dose Of Reality
With the tidal wave of digital progress overtaking us, surprisingly, our oasis seems to be on sweaty wrestling mats, filled with people hellbent on breaking limbs and strangling necks. Whatever misconceptions one may have had about their own ability or prowess, that is quickly erased once they’ve stepped on the mats. Whatever annoyances one dealt with during Twitter arguments that day, that is quickly dissipated as you fight for your very life. Whatever world problems have been bashed into your brain that day by the MSM, that becomes a speck of dust as you try to prevent the man in front of you from breaking your arm in two.
Stimulation Overdose
One thing that I am sure many of you can relate with, is that we may find ourselves shifting from tab to tab in search of those precious hits of dopamine. If you’re like me, you might even have 20 different tabs open at any given time. Some filled with positive information. Most of them — sadly— are chalk full of negative information. For example, on one hand, you are plastered with news like the climate change emergency. On the other hand, you have the very same people flying in armada’s of private jets. This kind of daily hypocrisy we are slammed with on a daily basis takes a toll on anyone’s mental health. Every day, the average person is given the responsibility of the world. To be a world citizen is to uphold the values that maintain it — yet when it seems like the very best preach “do as I say, not as I do”, it chips away at the very fabric of what we may consider proper virtues. The internet has a great way of keeping us living in cognitive dissonance. How can it do this? Because within 30 seconds of surfing the web, you are force-fed opposing ‘facts’. The ocean is blue. Actually, this site says it’s red. Both, equally true… at least according to whatever you may have typed in at the time.
Jiu-Jitsu Erases Politics
With this over-stimulation and cognitive dissonance constantly overtaking our minds, we become easily overwhelmed. After a 1–2 hour Jiu-Jitsu session, these issues seem trivial. Your lungs burn, your body aches, and you are so in the moment. The battles gone through on that mat begin to replay in your mind at lightning speed.
“What could I have done better?”
“How could I have gotten out of that?”
“Man, X, Y, Z are really good!”
Even on the drive home, the radio is turned silent, as you sit in meditative peace, reflecting on the battlefield you have just left behind.
There is no energy left for Twitter. For world issues. For politics.
The only thing you have the battery for is gratitude for the moment. Cherish it! For all practitioners of Jiu-Jitsu, cherish every day you get to train — for one day our bodies will whittle down, and we’ll finally forced to enter into the Metaverse. When that happens, all we’ll have is the memories made in reality — not the digital hell we’ve been subject to (particularly in the last 5 years).
There really isn’t anything like real life, so shut off your tech and try a Jiu-Jitsu class already!
