I’m thinking about leaving martial arts, and it’s hurting my heart.
Translation from Amhrán-ese: When I say things like “it’s hurting my heart,” that means that it’s upsetting me to the point that I have at least intermittently shed real tears over it, lost sleep and lost at least a portion of my appetite.
Another clue: When my heart hurts, I start thinking things like, “Maybe I can do the Stoic thing and stop speaking unless spoken to for the entire rest of my life,” “Maybe I should delete my blog and all my social media accounts,” and “cave-living is the new cottage-core.” And these all seem like fantastically appealing ideas: the fashionable feather cloak of silence, the tricked-out terrarium. The feather-cloak, terrarium lifestyle isn’t joyful, but it’s safe and therefore invulnerable.
I suppose you can be clinical about it and say that it’s simply depression, which I can fix with some meds and positive thinking. But if you’re going to slap the Big D label on it, let’s be more precise: It’s a form of existential depression, in which large, meaning-related questions turn into hornets and start chasing you across the lawn.
While the “everything is chemicals” people would disagree, existential depression is, in essence, a form of spiritual crisis. It’s typically centered on the big issues: death and what lies beyond, love, meaning-making, faith, truth and values. It often arises when the mundane realities of your small, particular life slap right up against these larger cosmic principles, whether you call them dharma, fírinne, rța or, for those so inclined, the Kin(g)dom of God.
Just like The Barbie Movie, cognitive dissonance often lands us in these thorny spots.
If agape is my core value, why am I pursuing a martial art? What is the relationship between a martial art – literally the Art of War – with the art of peace? Is the philosophy of Morihei Ueshiba what we’re enacting on the mat? And if I am having trouble perceiving it on the physical mat, did I read or understand that philosophy incorrectly? (It’s okay if that last answer is yes, you were wrong; Ueshiba was a complicated, contradictory guy and pretty much spoke in poetry.)
What is the relationship between violence and spirit, self-preservation and agape? If I am spending my free time learning different ways to kill people, what does that say about my values – all that fancy shit, like “Love is peak rebellion,” “becoming one water” and “love is that which permits”?
If I am an expressly non-hierarchical person who believes in the equality of all beings, why am I pursuing something that is based on strict hierarchy, obedience and rank? Why am I surprised that I feel like I’ve had a run-in with a cheesegrater after these encounters with hierarchy?
Just the fact that these questions occur to me is its own sort of answer. So, why stay? What is it that I really need to prove?
War and peace, the non-literary version
A world prepared for war is one without gardens.
These hornets aren’t particularly new, even if the nest happened to get kicked this past week. I’ve been asking these questions for a while through poetry.
The first was “The Gardener’s War,” written in 2019. In it, I was turning over what I learned in class – alongside that old saying, “Better a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war.” Is that really true?
My conclusion: The warrior is safe in his invulnerability, but he carries the battlefield with him wherever he goes. The gardener dies badly, but he carries the garden with him wherever he goes, and the last thing he sees is the beauty of this world. Which is the better way?
One interpretation of the relationship between the art of peace and the art of war is that the willingness to commit violence ensures peace. Way back in the 4th century CE, Roman author Vegetius once proclaimed Igitur quī dēsīderat pācem, præparet bellum – “Therefore let him who desires peace prepare for war.” Versions of this statement have popped up through the centuries in politics, and even as the motto for the British Krav Maga Association.
When we prepare and train for violence, whether on the individual or the state scale, the bad guys stay home: the proverbial “a well-armed society is a polite society.”
Except actual, lived experience seems to belie this: Just pick up an American newspaper on an average day. The proliferation of weapons hasn’t made us kinder or more polite, has it? And for that matter, just how peaceful were the ancient Romans? The whole “they make a desert and call it peace” – you know who that’s about, right? Feel free to ask the Druids of Mona how peaceful the Romans were, or bring up Jesus on speed-dial.
How peaceful was 14th century Japan, which gave us the battlefield arts of the samurai? Or imperial Japan? Or imperial anywhere, in any time?
Obedience and hierarchy certainly make sense in the context of budō, whether you’re talking about the dojo or Marine Corps basic training. The intent of military training is to fashion people into weapons – able to respond with violence at the snap of their commander’s order. You don’t need a gun or a sword to kill, although weapons make killing easier; you can use your own hands and body, and martial arts show you precisely how.
And that leads to some hard questions that go down with the grace of horse-pills: Would I be willing to kill? In what circumstances would I be willing to become a killer?
My personal capacity for violence
Like all human beings, I have a capacity for violence – and, oddly enough, I am usually okay with it. I consider that capacity not as my inner soldier or serial killer, but one of the features of my animal nature; like any animal, I will fight to survive.
I’m a woman who runs, and all women and all runners have stories – you know the kind. Here’s one: Back in 2005 or so, I was out on a run – on Main Street around noon on a winter’s day. A man grabbed me. I twisted my upper body and hit him – not hard, due to the angle – and ran on. I didn’t hesitate or panic, or even break stride; my inner animal reacted in the way that it’s meant to in this sort of situation. And I didn’t have any martial arts training whatsoever, other than a community center summer class in karate taught by a seriously out-of-shape guy when I was a kid.
If violence is the only option I have to get out of the beartrap, I’ll use it. I have used it, including that unfortunate evening in which I whaled a fellow aikidoka in the head (something I still feel bad about). If I feel trapped, the situation isn’t ending and this is the only item on the menu, I’ll place an order for the shit sandwich.
That said, fighting works in some situations, but not in others; sometimes, it can get you killed. The very best fight is the one you never get into; the second-best, like my scenario, is one that you can flee from, unharmed. So, steer clear of sketchy situations in dive bars. Don’t allow yourself to become incapacitated with drugs or alcohol – especially around people you don’t know or trust, although chemically assisted incapacitation is always a bad idea for a whole host of reasons.
But here’s the deal: Your inner animal really doesn’t want to fight. Like any animal, it prefers to nap in a sunny spot, or eat nachos, or watch Netflix.
You can, of course, train animals to fight – tapping into those survival instincts and twisting them to your own ends. In fact, dogfighting, bullbaiting and all sorts of bloody entertainments work on this chassis; The animal being trained to fight is subjected to the stress of combat over and over, which makes them more reactive to slights.
Scratch that animal anger, and you find fear.
Years ago, I talked to a Rottweiler breeder, who was explaining to me how she selected dogs for breeding. She wouldn’t breed fearful dogs, who were more likely to react to novel circumstances with aggression; of course, these were precisely the dogs that the local bad-asses wanted to breed, to protect their criminal enterprises or whatever villainous things they were doing.
Aggressive dogs are, at heart, fearful dogs. Sometimes this is wiring; they may have the canine version of sensory processing sensitivity, and thus a razor-sharp prey drive that makes them ill-suited for domestic situations – but well-adapted for particular lines of work, such as policing, hunting, etc.
Sometimes, this fear stems from harsh life experiences, typically abuse. These dogs have seen some shit and that’s why they will bite you. Stress-test a dog over and over, and this dog becomes either fearful-aggressive or fearful-cowering – the dogfighting champ, or the passive, tale-under-body victim typically used in training.
People aren’t much different.
Proving myself, and why I can’t really seem to achieve this
So, that comes down to the question: What is it that I am trying to prove?
Because, yes, there is a massive element of proving when it comes to my aikido experiences over the past eight years. I’ve gotten on the mat with broken toes and, more recently, a stress-fractured femur. I mean, I couldn’t even get out of the car without searing pain, and yet I showed up every bloody week after a 90-minute drive. I’ve endured insults. I’ve driven home in tears. I’ve lain awake at night.
The need to prove myself is rooted in shame, and this shame is, in turn, rooted in cultural values – particularly the values of warrior culture. If I endure enough suffering, the thinking goes, I’ll finally earn worth.
Our culture uses “sensitive” as a kind of slur, and I’ve felt the weight of this judgment for much of my life. Weepy, weak and whiny, sensitive people have no worth. They lack grit and resilience; they are coddled children who should have been smacked in the mouth more often. Sensitive people are crazy, which is the term we use for people whose view of the world can be entirely discounted.
They’re co-dependent, which means their overly giving nature is ultimately responsible for the bad behavior of the non-sensitive people around them. That’s why bad shit happens to sensitive people: They deserve it.
Every time bystanders have pointed out my deficiencies in regard to the martial arts – you’re too old, too feminine, too physically frail – I’ve dug my toes deeper into the mat. Hell, not just the mat; I spent 15 years in the rough-and-tumble world of journalism for many of the same reasons — and a lot of time crying in my car or in the bathroom between assignments. (Journalism, like martial arts, is often predicated on conflict and workplace environments are … not often the best, to put it mildly. The trope of the hard-drinking, chain-smoking journalist has some basis to it, at least in the old days.)
There’s something in me that desperately needs to matter, and in warrior culture, you’re either a killer or a loser.
From the dominator perspective, I am a born loser – the fearful-cowering dog, which is the feminine position in patriarchy. In our culture, violence is viewed as healthy entertainment and the holy pursuit of heroes; it’s even part of children’s television shows. And … I am famously incapable of watching any sort of violence on screen. It literally sickens me; I start to faint. Even verbal conflict makes me twitchy.
Whenever I’ve engaged in violence – physical, verbal, emotional – I’ve felt miasma. Whether or not we realize it, violence of any sort – physical, verbal, emotional – creates a spiritual stain, which we then numb out with alcohol, food, risky behavior, unhealthy relationships.
We need eustress, the “good” stress of discipline and exercise, in appropriate amounts to flower into our full selves. The opposite is distress, and we don’t have an infinite tolerance for it. There’s only so much grit we can take until we pull apart, and then we’re called crazy or losers or broken when we break down.
Can-kicking: It’s a lifestyle, evidently.
I don’t know what I am going to do, really. I suppose I’ll see how I am feeling on Saturday and decide whether I am up to the drive and class. I pay for the privilege to attend; I can, of course, simply not show up and move on with my life.
This isn’t a slam on the people I practice with, by the way; these are larger, deeper philosophical questions – ones I can’t find an easy answer to. I’ve hit these sholes before, but the pandemic and then my leg injury kicked the reckoning a little further down the stream.
It’s actually super-difficult for me to give things up, whether activities or organizations or relationships; I tend to stay until I wear out my welcome and bridges get torched. I also tend to grieve losses preemptively. Even thinking about leaving aikido is causing distress – but getting stung by the hornets of cognitive dissonance is its own kind of pain.
Part of the problem is that my usual reaction to soul-wounding situations involves can-kicking; rather than sitting down and thinking deeply about my spiritual path after I left Keltria, for example, I immediately joined ADF – if not the exact same day, then close to it. And instead of considering the deeper implications of martial arts and their role in my life after I left my old dojo, I immediately joined another – the same week, in fact. When one cat died, I immediately went out and adopted another – even though I was still grieving the loss.
It’s a pattern.
Another part of this pain comes from a sense of alienation. Spiritual crisis is rather alien to most folks; people can’t imagine getting worked up over values or philosophy, or why these issues matter at all. And, by the same token, I can’t understand the appeal of surface-level living, consumer culture or fantasy football.
Unfortunately, Paganism doesn’t offer much help in navigating conflicts like this. For one, we are our own spiritual authorities – which is great on smooth-sailing days, but sucks when your boat hits the rocks of spiritual crisis. I think a fair number of people leave Paganism because they’ve hit the rocks in some way, and found no one around to toss them a life preserver.
For two – and I have addressed this before – Pagans can also be tempted by the sanctification of violence; we have our own equivalents to Jesus of the AR-15. I mean, war gods didn’t begin with Yahweh, and polytheistic cultures invented militarism, imperialism and recreational slaying by the simple fact that we were here first.
That isn’t to say that there aren’t Pagans with a commitment to peace or nonviolence, although this seems to depend on one’s matron or patron deity. Brigidine Pagans usually fall into the agape bucket, for example. However, my definition of the Divine as Love would be considered alien – and quite frankly, pretty suspect – by many of my co-religionists. I am deeply aware that I am an outlier among outliers, which is fine most days – but painfully lonely on others.
And perhaps there’s really no help to be had when you hit the existential rocks. How to live in accordance with your deeply held values is a huge question, and the answer isn’t the same from person to person.
What do I want in my heart – the battlefield or the Garden? The Garden, of course.
Can you keep the Garden in your heart and practice an art of war? I … don’t know.
You can use fountain pens to write poems or take out an opponent’s eye, but is aikido a fountain pen? Or is it a weapon – a sword or, to modernize it, an AR-15? Can you use an AR-15 benevolently? Can you write poems with it?
What plowshares have ever been forged from swords,
what guns remade into spades?
What spoils melted into golden rings
for the lovers whose lives have been saved?
I have no answers, only questions to sit in seiza with. I suppose a resolution will come sooner or later. Maybe I find my joy and my place in aikido, even though I will never hold the battlefield in my heart. Maybe I’ll have a dream. Maybe I just stop showing up. Maybe I’ll have another wicked injury or a crying jag on the mat and decide that the price is more than I’m willing to pay.
I don’t know.
White Cat Grove 
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