Falling and Fighting.

As the son of a black belt, I grew up around martial arts. It wasn't a self defense class for the fat kid who got beat up at school. It wasn't a flashy-kick class for the cool kids to impress their friends at school. It was about discipline. It was about knowing when not to fight. It was about self control and humility.

The two most important things we learned in my father's dojo was how to walk away from a fight before it happened, and how to fall when we got hit.

...how to fall.

I'd never thought there was a technique to falling. I always assumed that once you were hit to the ground, it was over, nothing else mattered. But falling is everything. When you're hit to the ground, 80 percent of the damage your body takes is from hitting the floor - if you don't know how to fall.

Knowing how to fall is the difference between lying there defeated and getting back up with a few scratches. Knowing how to fall is knowing how to be able to get up at all. We learned how to punch. We learned how to kick. We learned how to block. We learned how to dodge. We learned how to feel and react, we learned how to analyze and calculate. But most of all, we learned how to fall, we learned how to think.

...and the funny thing is,

I've never been in a fight.

But the principles I learned in that dojo on the second floor of an underused church building, I have used my entire life. I've learned how to block and dodge the attacks that life throws my way. I have learned when to walk away and when to stand and fight.

I have learned how to fall.

And I've learned how to get up.

The road to success is paved with failure. You must know how to fall, to know how to rise. Martial arts for me was never a lesson in fighting. Fighting is a barbaric ritual reserved for the quick-tempered and un self-controlled. Martial arts for me was a catalyst through which my father taught me how to live.

Who taught you?