For years, I've found it impossible to articulate why I love doing martial arts, yet hate watching others do martial arts. Today, it seems so obvious that it should have never eluded me. That's how it is sometimes.
It is said that you do not truly know someone until you fight them. I think that this is a gross exaggeration. Or at the very least, an idea expressed by people with such limited interpersonal skills, that fighting is the only real way to understand those around them. Yet, while I disagree with the absolutism of it, I also firmly believe that it's grounded in reality.
One can learn a lot about themselves when put into impossible, no-win situations. How did we react? Did we give up? Did we work harder? Did we try something new? Did the pain, or the exhaustion or the fear diminish our work? Or did it make us push harder? The questions are endless, ever changing and highly indicative of character.
The same is true when learning about an opponent. We see them in many of the same positions we've found ourselves. Often enough, we were the ones who put them there. We cultivate a sensitivity to identify and exploit weakness. Sometimes we use it to teach, warn or help. Other times we use it to fight. But there is a rich, interpersonal, unspoken conversation that happens on the mat. One which has taught me things in a few short years that I did not otherwise see in my lifetime.
Inversely, watching martial arts or discussing techniques lacks all of that. Even amongst two martial artists, it is a poor substitute. Much like discussing a beautiful symphony, it's a nice way to hold onto the memory; but the conversation will never compare to the music.
The same discussion/spectacle - when had with a non-martial artist - is the polar opposite of the experience on the mat. The spectator is desensitized. Often unable to empathize because they could not possibly understand the experience. The spectator does not learn any more about themselves or anyone else. They do not build something special. They watch, criticize, often attempt to validate one side (though they lack the position for their validation to matter) and they attempt to live the experience vicariously.
This is the first time that I've articulated any of it. I wonder if I'm being too hard on the spectator. Or if I'm giving too much credit to martial artists at large, who may mostly be thinking "I get to hit people!", but as of now, this feels accurate.
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i very much enjoy watching martial arts. i can watch a beginner level class in an art about which i know little and find it interesting, or watch the highest level masters so inexplicable things and find it interesting. i also watch fights on the street (or did, when they were more common in my part of town).
when i watch with a fellow martial artist, i am always curious as to what they see -- how differently from or similarly to they see what is going on, compared to my own take on it, and why. the talk becomes a connection, a way of getting to know that other person through learning what draws them and what does not in the martial arts interaction we are watching. it is also a chance to learn, to see things that i did not see myself.
when watching martial arts with someone who is not a martial artist, it pleases me if i can point out something about what we are watching that might be accessible to them. i sometimes make a story, observing what i believe to be going on with one fighter (or whatever) and what is going on with the other, and how those things manifest in the techniques and movements that we are watching. it is interesting to me, then, to speak of it in a way that attracts, rather than repels or bores, to speak of it as a human thing (which it is for me) and not some esoteric system, or some unimaginable brutality.
mvd
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