the phagos blog

Let me just apologize now for my month and a half layoff.  Between classes and illness, I’ve been occupied for quite a while.  I am less than 3 months away from taking the black belt exam, and I expect it will take an increasing amount of my time the closer it gets.  Despite this, I find myself wanting a romantic relationship, knowing full well that I may not have time over the next 3 months to give it the attention it deserves.  Despite this, I think about it, more than I want to think about it. And I’ve been thinking about a lot more than that.
Lately I’ve been looking at my life, where it is, and where it’s headed.  I’ve looked around me, at the people around me, and their ‘ordinary’ lives, and thought, not for the first time, how nice it would be to have an ordinary life, and not the one I have now.  One where I have a significant other or wife, and some other things.  But I have to be honest with myself.  Their lives are not ordinary either - they only appear that way to me because I don’t see the ways in which they aren’t.  And let’s face it - I’m not an ordinary person either, and my life reflects that.

There are a lot of ways I could handle this.  Seems like lately it hasn’t been very well, but I can and do choose to change that.  I can’t make a woman like me, or want to be with me, but I can change myself.  I don’t have to view it as a liability, or something negative.  I can choose to embrace my life, to celebrate it, and make the most of it.  But I’m not sure that’s the answer either.  Sometimes I think if I embrace my life, then I simply reinforce to the universe that everything is ok and I’d like it to continue this way.  And that just isn’t true.

So the other way I’m thinking about using to reframe it, I owe to my jujitsu teacher.  One of the things he used to talk about a lot in regards to groundfighting was not to assign a value to an event.  When we’d be on the ground, going for a technique, the other person would naturally move to counter it, prevent it from happening.  Or the other person would get us in a disadvantageous position, and people would react in a negative way.  Interestingly enough though, our teacher would go into the very same position and show us possibilities we had no idea existed, showed us how to flow from one position to the next, maintaining the advantage in what appeared to be a bad position.  The key, he always said and continues to say, is to not assign a value to what happens.  By not making a judgment about what happened, you don’t get caught up in it, so you can see the possibilities in the position.

It would seem to me that’s the answer here.  Jujitsu is about timing and positioning - having the patience so you can move or have the opponent move into the right spot for the technique you’re tyring to do.  You can’t assign a value to what the opponent does though.  If you’re too focused on a single technique, and they don’t move into the right place at the right time, you won’t get it.  Worse, you’ll overlook what you do have available, and worse still, you might open yourself up to a counterattack.

So how’s this apply to relationships?  Well, part of relationships is timing and positioning - being in the right place at the right time.  If I don’t attach a value to being single, good or bad, I can better see where I am, what’s available, and when the time would be right to start one, if a woman comes along.  Obviously feeling sorry for myself or upset is going to skew my vision and push people away from me.  The flip side could actually be a problem as well - embracing things would send the wrong message as well, that the status quo is not only acceptable, but desireable.  But if I don’t attach a value to it, I can see both sides, the good and the bad, without getting caught in either.  And when the time is right, I’ll be able to see it clearly.  So I need to learn how to feel that desire without letting it become negative, or becoming so convinced that things are so great I overlook something great.

An ordinary life?  Nah, not for me.  The grass may look greener over there, but it’s not.  There’s issues everywhere, I just need to deal with mine better.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 10:03 pm and is filed under life, dating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.