The Soft Overcome The Hard

You will find, that in every aspect of life, this statement is true.  The soft overcome the hard.  The obvious, intuitive thing is not true.  The counter-intuitive thing is true.  God knows everything, and we know little.  You can study all your life and still know little.

In my life, I mastered music, judo, aikido, art, writing, home cooking, and swimming.  I wish I could make money in music, but it seems extremely difficult when there are more musicians than ever and fewer people making money from it.  I can't get enough rhythm and blues.

But I learned in my judo training that the moral principles of Jigoro Kano and Morehei Ueshiba are true.  Both were Japanese jujutsu masters who wanted to make jujutsu more civilized not less civilized.  Judo is sport grappling and Aikido is weapons grappling.  Judo and Aikido were born in the 1880s in Japan.

Greco Roman Wrestling began in the late 1700s in France amongst the soldiers.  Freestyle wrestling goes back to Britain and the USA and the catch wrestling tournaments held at festivals for people's entertainment.  Back then, a carnival or circus had a strong man who would take on challenges from the local people and other people would bet on the outcome of the wrestling match.  Catch Wrestling became freestyle wrestling, and that became collegiate when the American educators saw the value of groundfighting as scholastic sport and physical education.

In most combat sports, fights, and confrontations, if you oppose strength with strength, the stronger, faster man will win easily.  Yielding is the real strength.  Knowing when to yield to the aggression, redirect it, and make it work against the attacker is the secret to self defense.  This goes for boxing and kickboxing not just wrestling and judo. 

The soft overcome the hard.  Jigoro Kano was a physical education teacher, and wanted to create a system where the youth learned not to be aggressive and violent.  The more you act up, the more they will punish you.  So Judo can be a way to instill good values in the youth.  It teaches you self control, the best use of your body, to respect friend and enemy alike, and to be fair minded in victory and defeat.  There are no undefeated judo champions.

Even boxing and kickboxing can be used for physical education, fitness, self defense, and moral pedagogy.  But it is harder to use for this purpose.  Kickboxing involves a fight with gloves on, and the point is to knock the man out.  That is not physical education.  That is civilized fighting.  I am not saying boxing and kickboxing is useless or bad.  It is better than a parking lot brawl.

In my life, I have trained boxing, kickboxing, and judo, and I even have 6 months of Sambo training.  During those six months, I trained sambo, san da, and kempo jiujitsu.  Different uses of takedowns in different situations.

Obviously, if I had my youth over again, I would have done more boxing and less judo.  In boxing, there is reward for winning.  It is not just an amateur sport.  Even if you don't go pro, you can be a fitness teacher or do something involved in the sport.   Boxing and Muay Thai are similar things West and East, and have value to society. 

Most people in the street don't fight fair.  Self defense is a useless skill unless you are a teenager in high school or college.  But through the lens of martial arts training, you can learn to believe in yourself and apply yourself.  There are winners and there are losers, and there are empty talkers.  It is better to try and lose than be an empty talker. 

So I continue to like combat sports like boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, and judo.  It is a moral edifice for the youth.  Train hard, commit your evenings and weekends to something, eat right, don't run around at night, and be a winner.  It is a discipline of life.

In every aspect of life, the soft overcome the hard.  Tough, evil, vicious men may hurt you or sucker punch you or rob you or rape you.  But such actions easily rebound.  It is by being strong, not having to prove yourself, and knowing where you're at that you become a winner.

So I will continue doing art and music and writing in the spirit of the Kodokan.  You don't get anything for being the better man.  But if you are mentally tough, it doesn't bother you.  A tough minded man knows he will win in the end, because he is used to winning in a sportive contest. 

So criminals do crime and get crime done to them, and soft simple men lead quiet lives and die with contentment.  That is what I mean by The Soft Overcome The Hard.