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FFT: Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

Tired. And kind of confused. I hardly knew what happened in my first class at Elevated Studios in Wilmington, Delaware. It took a conversation with my son, who had watched, to start to understand that I might have learned a couple things.

I’ve been watching my sons train and compete for five years. We’ve visited around a half dozen other studios and there’s no where else I’d rather be.

During the Lockdown I’ve been preaching self improvement, immune boosting, and holistic strengthening of mind, body, and soul. The opportunity to train with some of the best in the art seemed too much for me to pass on.

It was more uncomfortable than I expected, and in different ways. I was nervous to watch the drills and copy them, the moves are intricate. But that wasn’t so bad. It was the matches. Five five-minute rounds. I lasted four matches. I had no idea what I was doing. I just didn’t want to look like a fool. I expended energy all over the place. I was one degree away from “flailing.”

But what else could be expected? Brené Brown’s phrase, Fucking First Time (FFT) came to mind. I had been more scared about this first class than anything I can remember since bungee jumping over a canyon in New Zealand 20 years ago. Just like the jump, I did it. I knew what the fear meant. I knew that that’s where I needed to go.

I can feel myself pushing forward already. I want to participate in all five matches. I want to prepare myself for that, to be ready to push further than I did today.

It’s an exciting shift in my life, to be exploring and testing the world as a habit. More of an anti-habit, stronger in discomfort.

God bless and thank you for reading, I appreciate you,

Jason

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Entirely Enchanted

This moment was the highlight of a wonderous day at Winterthur. After a week of grumbly adulthood, I needed to let the little boy inside me run about some.

And there he was. Toad sitting outside his house. I was back in a rocking chair, reading Adventures of Frog and Toad to my baby sons. Then further back, to my mother reading The Wind in the Willows to me. That was the first glimpse of my motherland, England. The hovels and houses and riverside adventures of those stories filled me with a love for that country.

Winterthur brings me back there, a wild, natural, cared for land full of color and life.

This was the first time we had seen Enchanted Woods in months. The Lockdown kept us from so many important places. The disappointment of seeing the Faerie Cottage blocked off was dissipated by the wonderful attention that went into decorating it to once again fill our imaginations.

The magic of the place carried with us as we explored further. We were startled and amazed when we interrupted a snake that had brought its riparian lunch onto the rocks. A catbird demanded that I appreciate it for a moment. We spotted a green frog that was much more camoflaged than the photo reveals. We found turtles sunbathing and snappers lurking in muddy water like sea monsters.

And we smiled.

Three or four hours were lost to the quiet and constant parade of deer, chipmunks, fish, song birds, geese, and groundhogs.

I had asked God for a reset. I didn’t know how to come down from the flight-or-fight fever of the previous week, so I got humble and just asked.

He provided.

God bless and thank you for reading, I appreciate you,

Jason

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Back to my Self in the Morning Sun

I fed an angry voice this week.

I got tired. I got frustrated. I saw a lie in the world and I lashed out at it. Of course, the lie took up arms and the battle commenced. I took it all personally.

I liked it. That particularly angry little monster has been waiting to say something nasty. It’s the fighting Spirit in me that has served me well, but becomes cruel when fed with anger.

Unable to accept the things I have no power over, I raged and hurt.

It was quite a pit. I dove in with my fists clenched, a sneering smile ready for the mud and the blood.

Then I saw friends. I was able to embrace the people who lovingly support me. I remembered how blessed I am, that I can use that fighting Spirit in love.

I needed that personal contact to shake me out of my own head, where I was plotting with that Spirit and feeding the anger.

It’s no fun climbing out of the pit, knowing that Spirit still exists, knowing I need it, knowing I need to master and incorporate it and feed it with love and care.

Truth isn’t meant to be fun. It’s meant to knock you sideways and kill the lies you tell yourself. The phoenix burn is painful and necessary for rebirth.

God bless and thank you for reading, I appreciate you,

Jason

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Healthy Child Contracts Influenza in School, Dies Horrible Death

New rule: When discussing a deadly virus, you may not compare it to other deadly viruses.

Please elaborate on how the deadly nature of the flu is baseless. Explain to me how those percentages aren’t important to the lives it destroys. Explain how headlines make one death more important than another.

Death doesn’t give a shit whether I believe in it or approve of it, it is coming. It ain’t new. It ain’t novel. Our inability as a society to accept death as an integral component of existence has us denying the nature of physical reality.


Denying truth (i.e. reality) is a lie. We’re living this lie that we can extend physical life forever and it’s costing us dearly.


But I can play the game too: What percentage of spouses dead from influenza are you okay with?


What percentage of children are you okay with locking in cages all day while influenza predictably spreads and kills in schools every year?


These are not questions, they are rhetorical weapons. If you live by that sword, you will die by that sword.

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Oh, She’s “Just Curious”

“I’m just curious what percentage of dead children works for you.”

Just curious? That’s lovely, I’m a big fan of curiosity. Curiosity is the best start towards truth.

Life is tragic and people die and none of it is fair. I choose to act in the world, as broken and dangerous as it is, and want to use accurate data to assess the risk I’m willing to accept for myself and my sons.

I believe we would have healthier children without State-run education. The State wants complicit, sedentary children on mind-numbing psychotropics and fattening Government meals. That’s what’s killing our children’s bodies, minds, and souls.

I’m curious how doped up and obese our society wants children.

FB link: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10220363937822865&id=1062625417&comment_id=10220366826815088&notif_t=feed_comment_reply&notif_id=1594326163206960&ref=m_notif

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A Quick One On Coping

Earlier this week I wrote about a feeling of abandonment. These abushes don’t need an obvious trigger when you are grieving.

I wrote about mindfulness and the larger part of my journey, but I missed a key strategy: Feeling It. Monday morning, when the empty half of the bed was full of sad bitterness, I lied there with it. I didn’t “push through” or jump into my meditation or breathing exercises. I let myself feel the pain and anger. I forgave myself for grieving.

There are times when you have to do the push and keep on trucking. But, if you have the chance, stay with your pain. That shadow of yourself needs to be integrated in your being. That trauma is a neccessary component of your higher self.

God bless and thank you for reading, I appreciate you,

Jason

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Happy Anarchy Day?

Shutting down businesses on Independence Day weekend may be the most symbolic act of a government without limits.

Museums are opening today, some businesses. Might July 1 be a new day to celebrate? A day where community organizations and entrepreneurs lead the way to a more free existence?

The enforcement arm of government is constrained by lockdown policies and a public relations landslide. Is this the time for free people to be free? Will we refuse to tolerate the suffering of those who improve our community by providing desired services and products?

Anarchy isn’t what you see on your TV. Corporate media gave up on truth telling a long time ago. If it ever was their mission, I wasn’t alive to see it. Anarchy is what we do everyday, choosing how to spend our time and resources without a governing body directing us. Anarchy is freedom. Will that be Utopia? Certainly not, humans are fallen and will continue to screw up in new and imaginative ways every day. The market will get things wrong, individuals will get things wrong. Individuals are motorcycles in an action movie, we can turn on a dime and course correct. The market is chasing those motorcycles. The relationship always has an element of adversary, but the market follows.

We go out today as free individuals who do not believe in the monopoly of violence held by the government.

Happy Anarchy Day,
Jason

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Mindfulness and Abandonment

This memory popped up from a year ago. I had just started a mindfulness practice in hopes of being a better parent. I had no idea that practice would help ground me in an imminent and perplexing loneliness.

The first anniversary of my wife’s passing was approaching and I was flying high in my first romantic relationship since becoming a widower. Shortly after that anniversary, the relationship abruptly ended.

I’m sure the timing could have been worse, but I was ditched at the same moment I was remembering how my wife left me, however involuntary that may have been.

My practice expanded in those days to include stretching that led to yoga and my affirmations replaced, “May I,” with “I am.”

There’s been more than a year of regular yoga and three months of Wim Hof breathing and cold therapy. During these practices I still run through many of the same affirmations and gratitudes. I flow between meditation and conversation with God.

The feeling of abandonment came back this week. A sudden morning rush. The wave was hard and short. Just a day earlier, I had woken up in that same bed with my angel of a girlfriend beside me.

That’s the damned irrational nature of grief. When you feel happy and connected, it can carry you to loneliness and anger. But I’ve got my breath, prayers, and affirmations. They remind me of who I am and how far I have come. They remind me that I am the only one who can abandon me. God won’t and no one else can, not if I’m in a place of loving myself and Him.

God bless, thank you for reading, I appreciate you,

Jason