JOURNEY - on Mastering Ukemi by Daniel Linden (classic books for 12 year olds .TXT) 📕

understand that his pain was a warning signal, not the end in itself and that pain was something that could and sometimes needs to be endured if only to prove to ourselves that we can stand it. He couldn’t look another man in the eye and stand up straight and tall. He slouched, and sometimes, I can’t be sure, but sometimes during training I actually thought I heard him whimper while being pinned.

But he stayed. After a couple years, and failing each test a time or two, he had made it to fourth kyu (level). He was changing and we would see the changes every once in a while, but he was fundamentally the same. There was no pride, no fire, no machismo, and for a martial artist – until he assumes the mantle of humility – those things are dearly important. You must believe, make that BELIEVE, that you are the toughest, strongest, quickest, wiliest, smartest, and most ferocious. Why walk into a battle believing that you can or will fail? It just doesn’t make sense. Even in aikido. Can you imagine O’Sensei (the founder of aikido) not believing in his invincibility?

But Jake was certain that he was weak and small. His mother had told him often enough and that was his mountain. He had to climb it alone and to this day I believe that Jake was my most successful aikido student. I believe that his training in aikido allowed him to change his life in a more significant way than any other student I have encountered, and I have encountered many whose lives were radically changed and improved as a result of their training.

The day Jake became a man started like winter days, Saturdays, often did in that Denver dojo. We had open mat time. People came and went, worked out, worked on weights, hoped someone would come by to do aikido for a while, and sometimes we would have a sensei on the mat for an impromptu lesson.

Jake was there. So was Ron, a nidan. After a while Bruce and Jack came in and dressed out. We were on the mat just doing a free-style kind of relaxed training when Ron threw Jake in what should have been a high fall.

It was a disaster. Jake came apart at the height of the technique and crashed to the mat in pieces. First his leg, then his elbow, and then maybe his back followed by all the rest of him. He screamed. We were all a little embarrassed, but Ron was angry. When he threw you, Ron liked you to crash hard on the mat with a resounding whack as you landed. It was totally misplaced ego. He did not like to look as if he was not completely in control. Ron could hurt you and really not care that you were hurt. In fact, he would get angry that you did not continue attacking him even if you were hurt if he was demonstrating for someone he wanted to impress. Ron was not the best example of an aikido black belt, but that is secondary to the story here. It’s only important to understand what happened next.

Ron yelled at Jake to get up. Jake did. Ron yelled at him to attack again and reluctantly Jake did as he was told. Jake flew high and landed, if anything, worse than previously. Ron yelled at him to get up again. Over and over, I could see Ron getting angrier and angrier, as if Jake’s clumsiness was an affront to his manliness and martial prowess. He threw Jake until he was too tired to continue and then ordered Bruce to throw Jake. He tried to go easier on the big guy, but Ron would not hear of it. He kept growling that we were going to teach this candy-ass how to take a break fall if we had to kill him in the process. I believe that what happened next was not the result of Ron’s intent, but a moment of true enlightenment brought on by Jake’s dedication to his training.

Ron grabbed him away from Bruce and literally lifted him up over his shoulder and threw him to the mat. He started screaming at Jake to get up, but Jake was all done. He was finished. Jake could not rise up one more time. His body screamed at the mean treatment and his ego and pride, what little had developed over the last two years, was now finally completely ripped out of him. He lay there and I was suddenly terrified that he would start to cry.

He was a thirty-year-old man who had a good job, was a fine handsome man with no bad character traits or at least no worse habits than any other man, yet he had never been on a date with a woman. He had never had the courage to walk up to a pretty woman and ask her out for lunch. He had never felt the quiet joy of a woman’s hand slipping into his in a darkened theater. He had never sat at a table in a fine restaurant with wine and crystal and linen between him and a lady he wanted to impress and then once impressed taken her home. Not Jake, not once. He had no courage and no ability to deal with rejection. The mere idea that a woman would turn down his attentions kept them bottled up inside him. He was thirty years of frustration, misery, ineptitude and fear.

So when Ron pulled back his leg and kicked him in the back, I was shocked. I should have then, at that moment, stepped forward and pushed Ron away and dealt with all that would have entailed right then, but Ron suddenly screamed at him to get up and then kicked him again.

And Jake came up off that floor. All six feet and seven inches of him came up and launched itself at Ron and in that single instant I saw terror