The Quest for a Blue Belt - Learning to Walk

After getting my Blue Belt, I did some reflection on what it took to become a blue belt.  As I was reflecting, I think I asked my self: "Self, what would you compare to the journey from day-one white belt to blue belt?"  Well, as a father, I decided that the best way to describe the transition, is like that of an infant to a toddler.

When you start out in this new world of Jiu-Jitsu, as a white belt, its like being born in to the new bright world.  There are all kinds of exciting things that go on around you.  At first, you're mostly oblivious to it all and sleep through most of what you see and hear, unable to really process it, and focusing on simply staying alive.  You're literally bottle fed, one sitting at a time, and that's all you can handle. 

Soon though, you start to really open your eyes to the world.  You look around and you see all these new, exciting things.  You wish you could do some of those things; play with them.  But still at this point, all you can really do is watch.  You can't roll over yet; you can't even control your hands enough to find your mouth, so feeding yourself, is still out of the question, and you're absolutely reliant on your bottle feedings. 

Within a couple of weeks or months, you really start to "figure things out" and "master" your body.  You can find your mouth with ease (the ability to feed yourself (careful you don't feed yourself the wrong thing)), you can even roll over.  This opens a whole new world for you.  you learn to roll over both ways, and eventually, with lots of encouragement, you get figure out how to crawl.  This is probably the most significant accomplish of a your life (for a white belt, this might be figuring out that one move that finally starts to click for you).  The significance of learning to crawl, if you think about it, is that this is something you "discovered."  No around you crawls.  They all walk, or do even more incredible things.  Without anyone ever showing you how, you've learned to crawl and opened yet another door of exploration in your journey.

Finally, with lots of trial and error, and relatively quickly after figuring out how to crawl, you get your blur belt; you learn to walk.  For me, this was a huge accomplishment.  I've had to move around a lot, so training in one place long enough to get my blue belt (seems like you always have to start over after a break), took me about seven years.  I hope that this current adventure will not take nearly as long, and I can't wait to see where it takes me, but for now, I'm pretty happy with walking.  I've got to tell you though, I've got my sights set on bigger and better things.

Hope you guys appreciate the analogy.  If not, I enjoyed it, so I guess that's all that matters. 

Remember, your support is motivating!