I fought in NAGA over the weekend
OK this was probably … my last fight of the year. Maybe.
I competed in the NAGA Connecticut tournament, in the Gi division. There were three competitors (because of my age, middle, and skill level, beginner) and I had the luxury of watching the two other competitors fight first. I carefully observed tactics and strategy, and quickly realized I could beat one of them by taking top but the other would be the challenger. He won that fight. It was double elimination, so I was up against the other guy first.
I focused on getting on top and staying on top, then heard my coach say “Eric go for choke!” So I got him in a rear naked and won by submission.
I lost my next fight, against the victor of the first round, sadly by submission. My first time tapping out. I’m not happy about that but that’s life. We have things that we strive for, things we’re proud of, and sometimes it doesn’t work out quite as we expected. Disappointment. That’s life. I fought well, I didn’t wimp out and I wasn’t stuck in my head. I took home silver.
Marriage and parenting and the balance therein
I love my boys more than anything else in this world besides my wife. And in our house It’s not us versus the kids; it’s our marriage first, then the kids. That’s an important distinction. The former elicits controversy, chaos. The latter, structure and respect. Parenting isn’t always easy, as I’m coming to pace with, and parents need to be together first and foremost. That’s the teamwork stuff. That’s everything in a family.
The boys will learn their most valuable life lessons from watching me interact with their mother. Our love and life together is their everything. All the rest of the stuff, the books, the people, the education, the sports, the friends, the challenges – they all pass through the filter we create with our marriage at home. We are the marble upon which our children will carve their understanding of life.
Look at it the other way: sacrificing a marital relationship for the sake of raising kids. Kids need their parents, and if you drop your responsibility as a mate, as a spouse, just to quell the noise of parenting, you damage a forever relationship. And that action, that decision-making, it’s observed by the kids, and it’s not respectable. And when your kids don’t respect you, you’ve failed in the parenting part. So you’ve tossed your marriage and you failed at parenting. There’s no way forward here.
Marriage first; kids second.
The Apology/Excuse Dichotomy
If you say you’re sorry then offer a reason why you did it, you’re not really sorry. An apology comes straight from the heart and it represents a commitment to change, to turn away from whatever merited the apology. Sorry with an excuse is not genuine.
On the flip side, if there is a specific reason you chose to do something and, given the same circumstances, you’d do it over again the same way, then an apology is not appropriate. It signals to another person that you intend to change, which you know is not the case. A conversation instead is more appropriate here, since talking about it can help you come to an understanding and prepare for future encounters with similar circumstances.
It’s either an apology or an excuse.
Bonus: a little jazz for you
The Goodbye Look is a jazz song written by Donald Fagen but in my opinion Mel Tormé did it much better in 1990. The song is a story of the communist takeover of Cuba when everyone was still there to have a good time.
For the younger among us – that is, younger than me, I guess – it might be worth explaining that Havana, Cuba, was a hot spot for gambling vacationers until the communists took power at the end of the 1950’s. There was Atlantic City on the Jersey Shore, just south of New York City. Then there was Havana. Now there’s Las Vegas. For a time, any American who was someone spent time in Havana. Then it all ended.
This is a song about that final moment, when it’s time to go, that “goodby look” from an armed rebel who hates you.
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