Connection

Here we are again.  Once more, I’m fighting to defend my stupid lapel from being wrapped around me like some kind of Christmas present.  He’s found a way to wind it under then over my leg and is using it as a rudder to control my movements.  He’s been experimenting with some of that Worm Guard stuff, and he’s starting to find success.  He’s using my lapel like a tether.  The material of my own gi has become an exercise in frustration.

He’s a better grappler than me and the disparity is amplified by the tight knot he’s managed to wrap around my leg.  I’ve tried yanking my leg out, but the bond is too strong.  I try grabbing his hand—fighting the control at its source.  But we’ve been sparring like this for weeks against each other, and he’s learned to hide it. 

I find myself barely at the edge of balance, relying on strong posture to keep myself from being reversed.  But I can feel myself closer to the tilt.  If I don’t figure out how to address this grip, I’m going to be on my back. 

I know my time is short because I can feel it.  In my brilliance—perhaps even a little out of frustration—I formulate an ad hoc plan.  I can’t find his hand, and I can’t pull my leg out, so I make a decision.  I decide that I’m going to rip my gi out of his hand.  I reach through, beneath my own leg, and grab a handful of my own fabric.  I start to pull, looking to strip the lapel out of his grip.  Gravity takes over.  He’s hooked a foot underneath my thigh and elevated.  I’m pitching forward and sideways and I don’t have my hand to stop my descent—it’s still holding my own gi.  Within seconds he’s finished the sweep and now I’m fighting for my life underneath side-control.

Later, after the round had ended, we are talking about our match.  We do that a lot.  We process matches and try to learn from them.

“I couldn’t unwind my lapel,” I shake my head.  “I was trying everything I could to untie that knot.”

“Your base was good.”  He’s always complimentary in victory.

“Yeah, but I think it was all over the second I grabbed my gi.”

“It was,” he agrees.  “When you grabbed your gi you gave me too much control.  You were too connected to me.”

I’m not the sort of person who knows how to disconnect his emotions from the rest of his existence.  I’ve had many people tell me that I need to learn, but I still don’t know how.  I’ve tried.  It doesn’t work for me. 

My physical body and my spiritual condition are intricately and intrinsically connected to my emotions.  There is no way to sever them, though there have been many times I would have severed that adhesion if the blade had been made available to me.  There are many times I have wished I could be the sort who could intentionally amputate emotions from everyday existence, but I also don’t think I’d like the sort of person I would be if I could do that.

To be honest, my emotions are a mess.  At least, I feel like they are.  I feel like I’m the sort of person whose feelings are twisted and sideways.  I don’t necessarily know that I’m unique. I just don’t know what it’s like to live with anybody else’s emotions.  I only know what it’s like to live with my own, and I know that mine feel mostly wrong.

I wonder, often, if it has something to do with the career choices I’ve made.  For some reason, I’ve always been drawn to the sort of roles where I encounter people on the worst days of their lives.  I’ve spent my decades stepping into crisis—into anger, grief, despair, and hurt.

I’m good at those moments.  I have a strange ability to disconnect the grief of others so that I can find my clinical mind—the one that exists without the pressure of emotion.  It allows me to do the job I was conscripted to do.  It allows me to be competent at solving the challenges in front of me.  I can solve those without the interference of feelings or sentiments.

I’m good at my job that way, but not so good at life.

Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. (Romans 12:15) 

My emotions always find a way to show up, eventually and often at the worst moment.  Sometimes they attach themselves to a random memory when I’m not paying attention.  Often, they find a subtle home in some unresolved wound or in the words of someone I didn’t realize I’d let have power over me.

Not that long ago I was coaching a tournament.  My team had several kids competing and I was moving back and forth between matches.  More than once—many times more than once—I found myself greeting one of the young people as they left the mats.

They were frequently upset and often tearful, crying from the pain of loss.  Sometimes they were crying from the pain of injury, but even the injury was little more than a mask for the pain of loss.  As they stepped off the mat, tears in their eyes, I would reach out with the best coach’s embrace I could find.  I would take them by the shoulders and look them in the eyes.

“Head up,” I would say.  “You fought well and you fought hard.  Be proud.   No tears.  There’s no reason to cry.”

I gave some version of that little speech a dozen times that day.  I was giving it again, maybe a dozen times later, when I took a moment to listen to myself.  I heard what I was saying, and I couldn’t help but laugh—but laugh at myself.

Who am I kidding?  I cry all the time.

It’s a thing I warn people about when I feel like they are beginning to discover my vulnerability.  I warn them that I cry a lot.  I think it might be an advance apology or something.  If people get to know me, they are going to learn that I cry a lot.  Maybe too much, or maybe just the right amount.  My emotions are sideway like that.

Many mornings I wake up with my mind already crowded.  There are lots of thoughts in there.  Some of them are pressing and important.  Others don’t carry all that much weight.  My mind is a strange place, and my thoughts are equally strange.  Maybe my mind is strange because my thoughts are strange.  Maybe my thoughts are strange because my mind is strange.  I’m not sure how that works.

If my mind were filled only with thoughts, I could probably handle it by thinking.  After all, wouldn’t the antidote to thought be other thoughts?  All the ideas running around my brain could be countered with oppositional ideas and enhanced with supporting ideas.  That would make it simple, if not easy.  The challenges I face inside of my mind could be overwhelmed by pure cognition and laid to rest—a clinical approach of sorts.  My clinical brain is skilled—it sees problems and it solves problems.  It gives great advice.  It analyzes patterns and discerns truths objectively.  My thoughts are seldom a threat.  They are simply problems waiting for solutions.

But my thoughts don’t inhabit my mind in solitude.  Every one of them is seasoned with particular flavor.  Some are spicier than others—they demand immediate attention.  Some are bland and almost meaningless.  Others taste unfamiliar and I’m not sure I like the taste—I’m also not sure that I don’t.  Life could be a whole lot simpler if all my thoughts tasted boring and non-complex.  That’s not how my mind works, though.

Just a few days ago I received a text from one of the young fighters I work with.  He’d had a tough night of practice and didn’t feel like he’d been successful.  He left upset and frustrated. 

He texted me to apologize for letting his emotions get the better of him.

Honestly, there was no justification for an apology.  He hadn’t done anything worthy of regret.  He’d been upset.  He’d been frustrated.  But he hadn’t done anything wrong.  He hadn’t done anything worthy of an apology.

I told him so.  I told him he had nothing to apologize for, because he hadn’t done anything wrong.  I assured him that his emotion was a strength—a fuel of sorts so long as it was channeled in the right direction.  I also reminded him that I, myself, am potentially the most emotional fighter in the gym.  He hadn’t noticed, but I’d been dealing with my own emotions that night.  Most of the time I deal with my emotions on the mats.

Emotions are a fuel of a sort.

A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man holds it in check.  (Proverbs 29:11) 

If only I could find a way to make my emotions stay where they are—in the place where I think they belong—sequestered away from my thoughts and my actions where they could stop bringing harm.  I would love nothing more than to put them in some sort of cage where I could observe them with the benefit of aloof safety and extract them when I needed to borrow a bit of motivation.  But my emotions refuse to be caged.  They leak. They squeeze their way through the crevasses and corners of my mind.

I wish I could be steadfast and solid, unshakeable in the face of mere circumstance.  I’m not the sort of person who knows how to disconnect his emotions from the rest of his existence.  Maybe that’s a confusing way of stating it, but the truth is that my physical and spiritual conditions are frighteningly connected to my emotional condition, for better or for worse.

It is amazingly frustrating how connected my emotions ar.  My passions override my intellect and permeate my thinking.  I can’t untie the knot.  In these moments I can almost do nothing but feel—I can’t think, I can’t settle, and I can’t find peace.  These emotions invade my intellect and steer me toward a strange and seemingly dangerous destinations.  My thinking has been hijacked by my worst thinking.

But my struggles echo in the opposite direction, as well, in the moments of my brightest cognition.  Mired in optimism and occasional ecstasy, my thinking becomes secondary to the dopamine spikes my brain craves.  The perceived positivity of the moment eliminates my ability to reason.

It is amazing to me how smoothly, and how easily, the sensations of my feelings can become sensations that take residence in my body.  The way I feel in an esoteric sense fluidly translates into the way I feel in my body—here in the physical realm. 

There are so many days when I show up to train and tell myself that I’m “just not feeling it”.  Those are moments when my emotional self is sabotaging and crowding its way into my physical self.  These esoteric, intangible concepts that seem to live in some unknown place become identifiable, tangible shards that find way to my body on a deeply cellular level.  My sadness causes me to move sluggishly.  A jolt of happiness adds bounce to my footwork.   A feeling of contentment becomes a sense of calm on the mats.

My emotional self, my intellectual self, and my physical self are intricately and intrinsically connected and unable to separate from one another.  Yet, despite their connection, they are often at war, vying for some kind of dominance. 

I don’t want to be the sort of person who is pushed and pulled solely based on emotion.  My emotions are a seasoning—they have no nutritional value of their own.  They simply enhance my presence in the physical and spiritual world.  It’s so easy to be severely affected by the temporal and the temporary—because that’s what my emotions are, a direct reflection of the temporal and temporary.

Yet they are still so connected as to be intertwined with the absolute essence of who I am.

He’s big, he’s fast, and he’s athletic—but he’s not good at Jiu-Jitsu.  He’s new at the stuff, and that makes him more dangerous to me than an experienced grappler.  He’s got a lot of strength that he can’t help but use.  He doesn’t know any better.  He’s not trying to be reckless, but he is.  It’s not malicious.  It’s ignorant.  He’s only just starting his Jiu-Jitsu journey, and he has a long way to go.

He asked if I wanted to roll and it’s not in my DNA to turn people away when they ask me to roll—even when it’s not the best choice. 

Within seconds I realize that there is danger to this exchange.  His ignorant movement is placing me at risk of injury.  He doesn’t know much Jiu-Jitsu, but he does seem to know better than to let me establish a good grip.  Every time I try to grab his gi he rips my hand away.  Then he grabs onto my gi and throws his body at something that isn’t really a technique.

I have to find a way to slow him down.  I have to figure out a way to control his spasmodic movements.   I’ve done this long enough to know that the best way to slow him down is to find some sort of connection.

But intuitively, he won’t allow me to grab hold of anything.  He just keeps grabbing at me and throwing his ample bulk in my direction.  It’s silently frustrating in my mind.  I’m trying to be a good coach, and I don’t want to increase my intensity. I don’t want to have to hurt him to slow him down.  I want him to be able to learn at a decent pace, but I also have to protect myself and keep his abundance of energy under control.  I have to establish some sort of connection.

Then I remember that I’ve been doing this stuff for a long time.  I’ve learned a couple of things along the way.  I’ve learned a couple things about connection.  I need connection, yes, but I need it on my terms.

He won’t let me establish grips, but he does keep grabbing hold of me.  If he’s connected to me, I’m connected to him.  He’s not going to let me connect with him, but if he’s connected to me, I can find him.  His connection to me becomes my connection to him, and with that connection I can slow him down.

I love that I have emotion.  My emotions enhance and inspire my life in so many ways.  But it is also a daily challenge to not be completely ruled by them.  If I allow myself to become obsessed by my emotions—and by the feelings my emotions inspire me to feel—I will lose all perspective.  I will lose track of the thoughts and memories those emotions are attached to.  I cannot live inside of my emotion.

But it’s difficult.  My emotions have the power and the authority to override my intellect and my physicality.  It’s easy for me to mistake constant thinking for a form of control, but it’s no kind of control at all.  My feelings are frequently the most intense sensation accessible to my mind and body, but I can’t corral them. They might be liars, they might be hypocrites, or they might be absolute atrocities bent on my total destruction.  But I wouldn’t know it because they’re so connected to everything else about me.  They are so close to me that I can’t see them.

In this struggle I find myself constantly on edge, teetering at the boundary of my mental balance.  I’m ready to fall and I’m ready to fail as the cacophony of emotions swirl around and about the places where I think and  feel.  I can’t find equilibrium and I can’t find the courage to interrogate those emotions at their source.

I have a hack for that.  I have a workaround.  I can never silence my active emotions—that’s not the sort of person I’m designed to be—but I can channel nearly every emotion into the one that is most familiar and manageable to me. 

I can always find anger. 

Anger is a comfortable emotion to me.  It feels manageabled, even though that comfort is an illusion.  It’s an illusion born out of familiarity.  Sometimes I think that I like being angry, but I don’t think that’s accurate.  Truthfully, I don’t like those other emotions.  I don’t like the sadness, the fear, the confusion.  I don’t think I’m terribly comfortable with supposedly positive emotions like happiness, excitement, and hope.  I’m not comfortable with them because they feel temporary and temporal.  They feel unstable.

When my emotions inspire instability—that feeling of being constantly off balance—it becomes anxiety.  Maybe anxiety isn’t an emotion of its own.  Rather, it might be a collision of all the emotions at war in my psyche.  Anxiety is unsettling, but I have a certain proclivity for it.  It takes on many forms, most of them unhealthy.

Much as I hate acknowledging the fact, I can’t control my own emotions.  I can certainly control the choices I make and the words I say, but I can’t control the emotions that live behind them.  They’re too slippery.  They’re too amorphous.  They’re sneaky and malicious—even the good ones.

Anxiety does have a potent adversary, though.  It’s not one I can access on my own.  My emotions might be slimy and sideways, but there’s a place I can go where they can be contained.

I say then, walk by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.  For the flesh desires what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you don't do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. (Galatians 5:16-18) 

I was challenged the other day when I read the words, “ May the peace of God avoid you until you find yourself in His will.”

Peace is a counter to my anxiety.  It is a quieting and flattening of the turmoil pinging around inside of my mind.  The only place I can find peace is inside of the will of God.  That doesn’t mean I won’t have emotion.  It means my emotions might fade into subservience.  They will still be flavor, but they will be flavor ornately prepared to be complimentary to the palate.

Peace often feels unfamiliar to me.  I don’t trust it.  I’m trying to be better about that.

Because there is something else I find in peace.  It’s almost addictive.  I find joy there.  And joy cannot be defeated—it is not a temporary or temporal emotion.  Joy is a state of being, a place I can set a foundation.  Even when battling contending emotions, I can still access joy.  I can access joy because it is more powerful than mere emotion.  It is more powerful because it doesn’t belong to me.  It is not dependent on my weakness.  It’s dependent on someone else’s strength.

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you believe in Him so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.  (Romans 15:13)