All Walks of Life

I (finally) listened to this podcast episode featuring my friend Christian Barry.
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(The podcast itself is hosted by another friend of mine, Jon Schwartz as well. And I said “finally” because this episode came out on Nov 28, 2019.)
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Both of them are based in Canberra, the capital city of Australia.
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Christian is a professor of philosophy and a BJJ black belt. He was one of the first students of Renzo Gracie and the guy who brought his grad school classmate named John Danaher to Renzo’s gym.
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One of the main reasons I enjoyed this podcast episode is probably because I know both of them and trained with them as part of our little grappling enthusiast group at that time.
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But their conversation touches on topics many of us BJJ practitioners would be interested in (e.g., what it was like at Renzo’s gym in its early days) and can relate to.
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For example, they talk about how you get to meet and interact with all sorts of people on the mats, including people who may have viewpoints opposite to yours.
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On that note, I liked this part:
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“There are people from all walks of life… every religion, every creed, every nationality, and what happens is that … kind of… we all get together and then… nobody really cares that much.”
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“Yeah, everybody is just much more interested in what they can learn from each other about this funny little… arm lock variation.”
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Of course, it doesn’t mean every BJJ player is a good person, or that BJJ will solve every conflict out there, but BJJ can give you opportunities to meet all sorts of people and connect with them via funny little arm lock variations.
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And… it’s up to you to take these opportunities too.
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I believe it’s much better to take them. It’s just like learning new techniques or trying new approaches.
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If you’re curious about Christian & Jon’s conversation, you can listen to their podcast episode here.
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p.s. Back in 2008/9 (I think), Christian was basically beating us up with guillotine choke and heel hook at our group’s open mat sessions, haha.