"In an Instant"

There’s a famous Scottish writer named George MacDonald.  Often considered to be one of the fathers of modern fantasy, he wrote a variety of novels, essays, and poems. 

Years ago, I came across a stanza from a George MacDonald poem. I didn’t memorize the stanza, but the first and fourth lines kind of stuck with me.

Alas, how easily things go wrong!

A sigh too much, a kiss too long,

And there follows a mist and weeping rain,

And life is never the same again.

Doesn’t that have a ring of truth to it?  Doesn’t it seem like things can go wrong in an instant, and that one moment can resonate with us for a long time? 

An instant is all it takes for something to go wrong.

I recently broke my arm.  

It was during Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.  I was rolling with my partner, someone I trust, someone I’ve trained with several times before, and someone I’ve rolled with dozens of times before.  When you roll, you need to make all kinds of decisions in an instant.  You need to adjust on the fly.  I broke my arm doing a move I’ve probably done literally thousands of times. Looking back at the footage, neither I, nor my partner did anything wrong.

Even though we did everything right, I still broke my arm. 

One small instant was all it took for a bone to break. A single moment passed and I had to wear a cast for months.  My BJJ training is now impacted.

People see me in the cast, and they ask me how I broke my arm.  I tell them it was during Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.  One person made the comment “at least it was while you were doing something cool.  Some people break their arms just from falling down stairs.”

They’re right.  

These dangerous instants occur all the time.  I broke my arm doing BJJ, but I could have broken it anywhere, doing anything, at any time.  I could have slipped on ice.  I could have actually fallen down some stairs.  I could have tripped over a stray cord or stepped off a curb the wrong way.  I was lucky enough to break my arm while I was doing something that I love.

That George MacDonald poem I quoted is called “Sweet Peril”. I was originally going to make some comment here about how Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu itself is the sweet peril, an activity where we get so much out of a fundamentally dangerous activity.  Really, though, that “sweet peril” is life.  

Bad things can happen.  They can happen anywhere at any time.  It’s not so much that BJJ is dangerous as it is that life itself is dangerous, but while we’re living life, we might as well try to do things that bring us joy.  For me, that means I’m still going to do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Christian LeBlanc, PhD.