Blue Belt Paradox
By Jessica Buckland
I wrote this a few months after getting my blue belt, 2 years into training. I’ve now been training for about 3 and a half years. I sort of feel like saying to my earlier blue belt self: It gets worse and better.
A blue belt. I suppose it’s a measure of time and movement, or so I hear. I suppose it’s a measure of forward progress but it doesn’t feel that way unless you are measuring by hours and numbers of months and not actual skill. It feels more about vision, understanding, depth, and commitment. And god help me, blue belt seems to be a paradox.
At white belt, every learning moment was like a lightning bolt or an unbelievable revelation. It was simply that. Each one unsullied and beautiful, bathed in the white light of naïve discovery, all new techniques and patterns add to the wonderment. It just builds and builds and the incredulity that there continues to be more of these discoveries was fun and exciting, almost childlike. Thankfully, I had some time to enjoy this before the paradox seeped in.
My vision and understanding are deeper and broader but they are not actually those things at all. I understand more deeply and broadly the overall story of jiu jitsu and the mosaic’s narrative. But the paradox is thus: Because of this deeper vision and understanding, I glean and can sense (maybe not even the magnitude though) how much detail and understanding I am actually missing and how much of the beautiful mosaic I am unable to see and understand even though it’s hanging right there tantalizingly, touching me always. It’s almost tragic. It’s definitely absurd. Thankfully my sense of humor about myself and my training has exponentially increased.
As I transitioned to my blue belt I realized that the revelations and lightning bolts are not as brilliant, not as pure. It’s not that they are sullied exactly, but now they have a twinge of the bittersweet understanding that they are just a sign that I am missing much more than I could even understand. Every time I see and understand that an underhook here is the same as the underhook there, I am reminded that there are so many other patterns I won’t see for years to come. What I see now speaks to the clarity and beauty of the jiu jitsu system: That it’s all really a series of hooks, that you can underhook with absolutely any part of your body, that there aren’t actually that many different positions but rather positions intersected on someone else’s body in different ways. These are simple concepts but I would argue they are actually more difficult than the more complex ones like the berimbolo or the omoplata. You could teach a monkey to berimbolo but I’m not sure you could teach a monkey to spot all the places an underhook happens in a five minute roll or even more importantly why an underhook even matters.
Commitment towards and before my blue belt felt like real progress. It was additive and even multiplicative at times. It was going to culminate. I felt that from the beginning commitment would mean arrival. Now I’m pretty sure that the idea of jiu jitsu arrival is a mirage. It’s not that each thing learned now--each new piece or pattern--does not speak to progress or of getting somewhere. No, of course my practice and experience improve as I learn these things. But where I’m going to arrive or what the culmination will be at purple belt or beyond feels different than what I’d imagined. A purple belt, so far in the distance, will be a mark of progress and commitment too, deep commitment. What it will mark or be is much different than blue; I can already see that. Blue feels like an arrival of sorts. I let out a sigh of relief like I was finally going to feel validated and like I really do jiu jitsu. For a little while I did. “AH now I can finally say I am a bona fide practitioner.” Newsflash: A year later I still feel like a fraud and arriving there, well, it didn't have the impact I thought it would.
I know that it could be a function of my stage of blue and how far away purple is but I have a feeling it is another paradox. Commitment at blue belt will culminate in the understanding that there is nowhere to go and that there is no validation. It is all right here.
To stare down that barrel makes it hard to commit as a blue belt. It makes it easy to say: “I have the rest of my life to pick up and understand all these details AND I know that it will take that long so I can actually commit LESS.” And so the paradox of commitment at blue belt, informed by the little inklings of things seen and sensed, unfolds. There’s a simultaneous sense of true commitment and validation but a dawning realization that what you truly have to commit to is never, ever feeling done, arrived, or valid. Perhaps this is why blue belt claims so many once-passionate practitioners and why, at times, looks like a graveyard.
