Kindred Spirits

I recently accompanied my brother to a mixed martial arts dojo. He hadn’t formally trained in many years and was looking for a new art. As I left the reception area for the ladies’, the first words to spring from my mouth was “shoes and socks off on the mat?” It was just a knee jerk reaction that was second nature – a reaction that seemed to be recognised by the gentlemen at the desk. “Nah, it’s OK.” He replied. “Really?” I was totally dumbfounded. “Sure,” he assured me. Being the stickler for dojo etiquette that I was, I actually felt honoured. I marched purposefully through the matted area and saw the heads turn.

Everyone looked as if I were checking them out, assessing them through my rounds of the school. You could easily pick out those who trained hard. Most looked comfortable, some looked defensive; others just looked tired. I was struck by people’s body language: The hunched shoulders from fatigue; the languid movements after a hard session’s or sessions’ training and the weighted swagger of a student who lived to train – they all reminded me of myself at one stage or another. I instantly felt I belonged there.

It had been a long day for me, so instead of watching a class with my brother, I elected to vegetate with my head resting back on one of the sofas near the reception desk. It probably gave out quite a signal. As I people-watched, some met my scrutinising gaze with confidence and some meekly averted their eyes. You can always tell how serious someone else is in their eyes. Shortly, a young man and a companion sat on the sofa across me. He was whining about training with an injury. It brought me back to such days where I was so dedicated to training that I worked  ways around a bad knee, a bad shoulder, bad skin, bad back to name but a few. You can only laugh about it if you’ve been there. He’d said something that had made me snort and my eavesdropping was made known.

He and his companion were filling out forms with the large heading ‘Fight Club’. Having recently seen the movie again, I tried to make conversation, as I’m wont to do when I’m bored: “I thought you weren’t supposed to talk about Fight Club and now there are forms?” The young man found me mildly amusing. “So what do you do in Fight Club? Fight?” I asked sarcastically. “Ah, some punching, kicking, sparring, stuff like that,” he answered. I scoffed. “That’s not fighting.” A knowing grin emerged from his mouth that said we were on the same page. The man who had been at the reception desk came to the coffee table between our sofas with various documents and said “Oh isn’t this getting cosy!”

As our banter turned to jokes and talking shop, the young man said, “You should join our club”. He had a look of great sincerity in his face. From our conversation thus far, I could tell he took his training very seriously and I had been so flattered by this invitation. He’d caught me at a day when I was just feeling low on energy, and all I could do was shake my head despondently, exhaling a huge sigh,  “Been there, done that. I miss it, but I just don’t have the energy anymore.” In awe, he told me that his aim was to one day get to that stage. I wondered if he knew what he was getting himself into, but it was up to him to find out. I’d dedicated a third or my life to one art and one Sensei. We all have our different paths, but sometimes it’s the same sort of spirit that gets us there.