Meaning and Freedom

I have not been going to Judo recently. After class ends I usually have a nap for an hour or so to catch up on sleep before I go to training. On a Wednesday a few weeks ago, I woke to my alarm; and had the same mental battle I always have. "It would be so easy to skip, and there is no reason why you have to go anyway..." This time; I lost this battle. I haven't gone to training very much since then. I keep having the same series of thoughts; and keep coming to the same conclusion. I came to Tokai because of my own desire to train. I am accountable only to my own desire to train. If I fail; I have failed only in that I didn't pursue this earlier desire. If what I want changes; there is no reason why I ought to give priority to my earlier goals.

I sat at my computer and surfed the internet as the starting time for Judo came by and went. I checked the feeling; I felt mildly guilty, but not guilty enough to do something about it. I have been struggling to motivate myself recently. For the past while, what usually happens is that I would bow on a training partner; they would refuse to train with me; then I would watch them agree to go on with someone else 30 seconds later. It has been getting to me. It's an inevitable consequence of doing Judo like a lunatic. I feel no embarrassment when I do what I do because I know that when I leave this place the amount of contact I'll have with the other judo students would be the same as if I had never met them in the first place. It's kind of a "what happens in Tokyo stays in Tokyo" kind of mentality. I justify my erratic Judo because I know that I have no other choice. There is no other available option for me if I want to throw anyone. I have been getting some successes. When I first came here; I couldn't move the heavyweight players at all. Since I started developing my own movements; I have been capable of shifting heavier players with "the corpse whip". I'll go back to my degree; and can put my back on these experiences if I decide that they are unpleasant. The other students don't have this option if they choose to be my training partner. They have to live with, and be accountable for the embarrassment I inflict on them.

Japanese players work hard to refine their techniques within the stringent boundaries set by their coaches. After hard and frequent training, they arrive at a small number of airtight; polished techniques. For reasons I have written about before I believe that this kind of approach to playing Judo can be manipulated by taking the game outside the boundaries of an opponents training. I have to adapt to function. I am trying to develop a radically different approach to Judo; because I think I must.

Learning Judo is a slow and methodical process. The ordinary approach to learning seems to look like this. If you take a teachers instruction on how some technique ought to be done; adopt it; and use it against another player, you can become quite successful in what you do. You get to learn from the experiences of your teachers; your teacher's teachers, and your peers. The collective experiences of many coalesce into one giant Venn diagram. You can cross the boundaries that separate your experience from someone elses'; gain access to approaches used by many other players, and then take them for your own use.

This approach can be limited too. All the other players have been using the same collectively available information. They have access to the same knowledge; and it is a presumption to rely on the hope that you refined your techniques more than your opponent. Whoever has trained the hardest and the longest will have the most diverse experience. Relying on having better technique than your opponent seems to me to be to be not that different to relying on being stronger than your opponent. It's just another presumption that you have expended more effort to get a particular quality than your opponent did. It is not "efficient" in the way I think Kano thought of it. In my current situation; I know that the amount I have trained pales in comparison to the other players here. Also; if collective experiences can be expressed as a Venn diagram, my circle sits in isolation outside of all the others. I can't utilize much of the instructions I have been given, due to my weird physique and other differences.

Following the experiences of others extends beyond Judo. If you follow what knowledge is offered to you; you will understand, and you can resolve problems using this knowledge. This is an enticing concept. You can receive gifts of understanding from another that encapsulates all possible ways to react. If it were true, you could structure your life, and your approach to resolving any problem around what people say you ought to do. You are offered meaning by training, study, or learning. If you continue to absorb this gift; you will encroach ever closer toward a complete understanding of how you ought to react to any given stimuli. You can take valuable experience, and use it in your own life. You will be given a sturdy foundation on which to anchor your life and your actions.

This only applies if you are exposed to the same problems. This requires a certain amount of homogeneity between a teacher and a student. I don't think I am similar enough to others to be able to adopt others approaches. I am not making the claim that everyone elses prior experiences have no value to me; but I do believe that an experiences' utility is limited to the circumstances it was applied in. You must presume that you are doing the same thing your teachers were doing, and have the same obstacles to overcome. Being different has given me the view that  one persons experience cannot extend universally to all.

I think there is a way around this problem. No one ever made the claim that all prior understandings of Judo were to be considered exhaustive. Nor did anyone say that all the possible approaches to Judo that could ever be done have been already done. "There is more than one way to skin a cat." Behaving differently; being creative in your approach can have its benefits. You don't have to reinvent the wheel; you can get a better view of how you can act by looking at the view from standing on the shoulders of giants. Consider what you have been taught; salvage from it what you can if you cannot adopt it wholesale, and then extend it into uncharted territory. If you can use a novel approach; it can only be rebutted if it fits within the prior conceptions your opponent has drilled. Ive recently learned how to sacrifice my own balance into getting an overhand grip on my opponent. I'm still rusty on how to use it; but that it works at all is more than I was capable of doing by trying a conventional approach.

I have started to view life in a different way to how I used to. I used to try and adopt the views of other people; of authority figures in my life; but it didn't apply to my circumstances; and so I could not use them to find any meaning in my life. For a long time this bothered me. I was forced to come to my own understanding of life; because I could not use anyone elses. My high school tried to teach me Christian values. I could not invoke to aid me what I felt was at best an absentee god; and more pessimistically a god that had authored, or at least permitted every suffering that I had ever felt and seen others suffer. I could not adopt the hopes and dreams of the other students; because the trajectory of their goals would lead them to places I could not follow. I had grown up hearing the word faggot used interchangeably with concepts like "inexcusably weak" "failure" and "social leper". No amount of money I could ever earn would detach that word from me. No amount of work would change the fact I was a subclass being. And so I felt that taking my high school teachers lessons and using them for my own benefit was pointless because nothing would lift me out of that. I saw no correlation between hard work and being welcomed in respected jobs, in society, with other people.

I believe there is nothing that any one person can do that can make others respect them and welcome them in their company. People choose to welcome others because it benefits them individually. I used to think that I could modify my behavior to be coherent with a group, and from there I would become friends with people inside that group. But there is no collective group understanding of what is and isn't acceptable. There is no memo sent out, that can be consulted to see if one person meets the description of what it requires. You cannot appeal to any solid conception of the "group", because in fact it is imaginary, it is just the shimmering consensus of like minded individuals who want the same thing for themselves personally . Individuals join groups because it benefits them personally, and those individuals uphold the viewpoints of their group because it benefits them personally. There is nothing reinforcing these individuals viewpoints except an imaginary bond . For instance, you might behave as you think an Australian should, because you get the same privileges and benefits that others you imagine to be like you do, by being of that identifiable group.  You may have never left your city, and have no personal experience of what the word "Australian" applies to, and yet be adamant about what the term means and excludes, and you will do so for no other reason than self interest. And so, with self interest as your foundation; you might share a stronger bond with people you will never meet, that live within the same country as you, than with people that live on your street but come from abroad.

This has led me to some opinions that I hold now. I believe there is no meaning in life beyond what people tether their identities to, to position themselves in an environment they have no personal understanding of. I will never go to space, see an atom or speak German, and yet I am convinced that I exist in a world; that it is round and suspended in a nothingness called space; in a world where nuclear bombs exist, in a world where Berlin is a place and that it was divided before the wall was torn down. I know these things because I was told so, and I believed them because it benefited me to do so. I chose not to believe in God, not because of any compelling proof one way or the other, but because it benefited me to not believe. Every word I am using now was first coined by someone else, and it benefits me to include them in my speech and writing. I will gain no benefit from trying to adapt Japanese judo into my judo vocabulary, I don't have the physical hardware to run it. Nor will I achieve anything by trying to fit in by doing judo normally. I cannot make myself to be like a group that doesn't exist beyond the individual desires of its members.

I believe that in the absence of any group I can attach my hopes and desires to, I am free to pursue my own meaning, and can use that as a foundation for my actions. I have begun to do so in Judo. I fail no one if I don't go to training tomorrow; because no one requires it of me. So long as I am not antagonistic or aiming to hurt anyone, I do not need to curb my behavior to fit anyones understanding of how I ought to do things. If I get ignored by someone during training here, it is because acknowledging my existence doesn't aid them pursue their own self interest. This won't change if I start doing judo conventionally, I will only get worse at throwing, be a worse training partner, and only get further away from offering anyone any personal incentives to train with me.

I have started skipping during my lunch break. I usually do around 15 minutes of skipping, 40 pushups, 60 leg situps, and 8 minutes of bridging every weekday. I do this because my Japanese classes can be monotonous and robotic, and I don't feel any perceivable improvement in my ability. When I work on my fitness, the improvements are more visible; possibly because I have yet to reach any kind of plateau like I have with Japanese. I feel motivated to do this, it helps me feel like I have achieved something worthwhile in the day. I skip in one of the empty judo rooms in the budokan and look at the 2 meter by 1 meter Hinomaru that is hung up as the centerpiece. I look at it and think about it every day. I have my own interpretation of what I want it to mean. I take it as meaning that human beings are free to call anything they want whatever they want.

There is a burning presence in the world, people call this both a sun and a star. Japanese people have taken the concept, and applied it as they wanted to. It is thought to be an "Eastern" concept, in that the sun comes from the East. If the world is round, East points in the opposite direction on the other side of the world. Does that contradiction benefit anyone by acknowledging it? No, and so people don't when they use this flag.  The sun appears to move across the sky in this direction; but actually the inverse is true. The earth rotates in a West to East direction. Does acknowledging this benefit anyone? No, and so for the purposes of this flag, no one does. You can take any arbitrary space anywhere on the planet; call it the source of the sun, call that direction "East", and then position it as a way to identify any country. Japanese people have chosen a symbol they believe to represent the sun to represent their country, because it benefits them  to assert that the sun rises in the East, and that East is a relevant direction on a round planet. This was not a collective decision, I don't believe there was a "Japanese" reason to choose this flag over any other. Everyone consented to it as individuals because it benefited them personally to anchor their identity to it. I too can assert that the sun and its relevance to me is whatever I want it to be. As a concept, I am free to adapt it to my own use, because it won't make any tangible physical difference in how I apply it in my life. The sun could be 100 kilometers up, or it could be 8 light minutes. Neither distance is one that is relevant to me; because I cannot travel it, nor do I need to know it. Either will result in the same personal benefit to me if I choose to believe one over the other. In the absence of any proof to the contrary; I have the freedom to construct my reality in any way I choose to.

I am getting better at standing on the yoga ball. Currently, I can stand on it, lean backwards at maybe 45 or 50 degrees, and catch a tennis ball behind my head. I am aiming to be able to do this 5 times at 90 degrees without breaking the position. I have an idea. I think it is theoretically possible to counter O Soto Gari, if I can learn to become comfortable in my balance while my head is bent backwards. This position is normal for tori to try to push me into as an attempt to unbalance me. If I can learn to be stable in this situation; then I may be able to develop a future technique to counter it. It is an interesting exercise. You feel your center of balance leave your hips and travel behind your back into the air. It is an imaginary concept, a center of balance that is formed in thin air; and yet I can use it to pivot my weight around it. I fell off the ball once and fell onto the ground; and landed on my feet. I used nothing but air as my center of balance, recovered my position, and landed unhurt. There are nuances of this position that exist. Only with bent knees and just enough of my back and neck protruding backward as a counterweight can I stand like this. I choose not to acknowledge them; because I cannot find a way for it to benefit me by doing so. It is simpler and tidier to call the vacant air behind me my "center of balance". I wonder if I can attack a judo player by fortifying my balance over an imaginary pivot.