Two Black Belts and A Mic, COVID-19 Edition

LifeJitsu: Art of Life

What if you had to say goodbye forever to your greatest passion, your favorite work? What if you had to say goodbye and finally move on and find something else -- either because of Father Time or circumstances outside of your control? “What would I be without jiu jitsu?” Robert Drysdale says during the 2 and ½ hour podcast we recorded on Cinco de Mayo. “I’m able to picture myself, for a minute, without BJJ… I’m not chained to jiu jitsu.” Over the years, in my own life, I have contemplated the same. Among other things, in 1995, major surgery on an artery ended my collegiate wrestling career, which threw my entire identity and sense of self into limbo. More recently, during the past 9 weeks, the COVID-19 crisis has stirred in us a wide range of emotions. Highs and lows. Fear and Faith. And yet, as Napoleon Hill and many others espouse, every adversity overflows with equal opportunity and advantage. Within any chaos, if we look close enough, there are always seeds of positivity. “I was depressed for about the first two weeks,” Drysdale said. “I had just signed a lease for a new gym in Henderson a week before the lockdown, so it was a horrible thing.” By Week 3 of the government stay-at-home orders, the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black belt legend started to adapt. Time to learn some new skills, he told himself. He started practicing on a guitar and regularly reading Shakespeare -- two things he had long targeted but never previously gotten around to because of his busy travels across the globe. Everyone with a cell phone and a Facebook account is an expert on everything these days. But how do you REALLY know what you think you know? What are you basing your opinions on? Frank, who graduated with a degree in Philosophy from the University of Maryland, has always been particularly interested in a little-known branch of philosophy called “epistemology,” which is basically the study of “How Do I Know?” Robert and I tackle a lot of topics herein -- both advocating the urgent need for more concerned citizens to set aside political ideologies and biases and avoid the tribalism that is viciously dividing Americans these days. We reveal things about ourselves that many people don’t know. We try to draw wisdom from the COVID-19 challenge, we talk about countries we have visited, and the hard lessons we had to learn from being way too ultra-competitive on the mats. “If someone scored a point on me,” Drysdale says, “I would lose my s___.” A coach took him aside one day and sternly scolded him, “You need to calm the (expletive) down.” There were low-points for both of us, and high points such as when Robert won the prestigious ADCC Submission World Championships absolute division. “You wish you could freeze that moment,” he says. “Where do you get that high again? It’s a natural high you can’t replicate ever again.”