A Boy Named Resistance
Ed stumbled from the mat as if the earth itself had chewed him and spit him out. His face, crimson and cracked, dry skin peeling like paint left to blister under a mean sun, exposing the mask beneath. His mouth was a wasteland, dry as bone, dry as days lost wandering a desert with no compass, no canteen. But no desert had swallowed him. Only seven minutes. Seven eternal minutes against a boy named Resistance who bent him, bound him, beat him—not with mere violence, but with the slow suffocation of control.
His eyes, once green, were now shutters. Closed doors nailed shut against the daylight, and all those around him, encouraging and offering words of support were zombies.
Coach Mike walked to him, careful as a man stepping toward a wounded animal, wary of the shame and silence crouched inside.
“What happened out there?”
Ed’s shoulders twitched. “It’s hard to play the game I want to play when they’re grabbing my gi.”
Coach Mike squeezed his eyes, listening past the words to the rebel army that was being recruited underneath. “But that’s the game you signed up to play. You’ve had success before, why not do what you know works.”
For some, reason enters the ear like strange alien glyphs, squirming and wriggling, impossible to decode without machinery not yet invented.
“I don’t know. Pulling guard—that’s not the game I want to play.”
Coach breathed once, twice. People often said he was too black and white, like an old film reel spinning in the late 1930’s. But he knew better. He saw in color—wild, vivid, violent color—and all he wanted was his students to see it too.
“I didn’t say anything about pulling guard,” he said. “If you want to do takedowns, for instance, there’s a whole art for that where they wear the gi.”
Ed’s ears were shut, same as his eyes. A fortress sealed against the music of truth.
And Coach Mike knew—knew in the way men smell the rain before the storm—that some come to jiu-jitsu to conquer it, to hammer it into their own proud image, like an idol made for worship. They pluck the strings their way, refusing to tune, and call the noise music. They mistake the illusion of independence for freedom. And in the end, they’d find themselves prisoners of their own stubborn song, souls locked behind the very doors they refused to open.
I’ve pieced this scene together from countless moments I’ve witnessed—different faces, same struggle—until it has become clear that what looks like a personal battle on the mat is really a universal one: our relationship with choice.
Choice and the Illusion of Freedom
This is one of the most interesting things about people in jiu-jitsu: their relationship with choice.
Many want to be good, but they believe freedom lies in aligning that goodness with their own truth. They approach the fundamentals as a buffet; take what looks appetizing, skip what feels uncomfortable, and expect mastery to come out of it. They call this free will.
But free will isn’t just freedom to choose; it’s also freedom to suck—and many take full advantage.
When this is pointed out, some believe you are trying to make a servant out of them. But the goal is never servitude. The goal is harmony.
A violin string does not lose freedom by obeying tuning. It gains music.
Yet what people resist, especially in our shortcut culture, is the patience required to create music worth hearing.
I’ve seen students fail on purpose—choosing to lose on their own terms rather than on jiu-jitsu’s terms. Why? I could speculate for hours. Maybe they’ve never considered it. Maybe they’re being intellectually dishonest. Or maybe they’d rather hide. Whatever the reason, the outcome is the same: they trade growth for control.
The rebellion many bring to jiu-jitsu feels like independence: “I’m learning it my way.” But that path almost always ends in slavery—slavery to appetite, to stubborn resistance, or to despair.
It’s a deeply countercultural truth: the highest exercise of reason isn’t asserting ourselves, but bowing to the truth revealed in insight.
The rational soul knows this. It longs for order but wars with the flesh—the part of us forever reaching for aggrandizement or self-pity, depending on our bias. Obedience resolves this tension. It doesn’t crush reason. It allows reason to fulfill its purpose: showing why jiu-jitsu works the way it does, and why every other path leads to chaos and contradiction.
And if you think you have to learn the hard way—because you believe that’s just part of who you are—let me stop you there: that theory is a lie. There is a better way, open to all, and it begins with obedience.
Jiu-Jitsu isn’t something you conquer. It’s something you gain through obedience. And when you finally yield to that reality, you don’t lose freedom—you discover it.
The boy named Resistance is waiting on every mat. You don’t beat him by force. You beat him by tuning your string to truth, by obeying the notes already written. Do this, and the music you make will be your own—and it will also be beautiful.