The Obstacle is the Way

Recently I was working with my friend, illustrator, and shooting buddy Dave Wagner on the book. He said something that has been lodged in my mind ever since. He said “The obstacle is the way”. This is true on so many levels. Let’s explore.

Jiu-Jitsu

In BJJ, we spend a lot of time suffering; both physically and emotionally. Walking into a dojo to get smashed several times a week is no easy task and most people cannot keep it up in the long term.

One of the secrets to success, however, is to focus your efforts on improving your weaknesses. Let’s say you always get stuck in bottom side control. The suffering you experience is due to your inability to escape that bad position, so fix it to reduce your suffering. The obstacle is the way.

Strength, Posture, and Joint Health

This principle also applies to your body. For the last decade, jiu-jitsu has been my primary tool for finding the weak spots in my musculoskeletal sytem. Whenever a chronic injury emerges, and they always do, I treat it as a signal for what needs attention. It means that there are some dysfunctional mechanics that can be fixed with the right combination of mobilization and stabilization (i.e. stretching and strengthening).

Figuring out what needs to be mobilized and what needs to be strengthened is no easy task and it will take time. You’ll have to study your body carefully, read books, watch videos, and talk to medical professionals to learn your body. My best advice would be for you to loosen the tight spots and tighten the loose spots. Solidify the changes by adding strength

Recently I’ve ventured back into a kettle bell practice. Kettle bells, like jiu-jitsu, are a wonderful teacher. They will very quickly (sometimes painfully) identify your mechanical inefficiencies. Pursue perfection in your kettle bell technique and you are pursuing pain-free, highly functional, very strong mechanics. Find the obstacles, they are the way.

Life

This also is a broader metaphor for life. I love discussing this with my chemistry students at the college. Borrowing a quote from Jordan Peterson:

“I see myself on a beach, some tropical country, drinking margaritas and I thought, first, that’s not a plan. That’s a travel poster... So you go down to this tropical country and you go sit on the beach and you have a margarita. ... how many margaritas? Like 10? Okay. So you’re going to do that. We’re going to do that for six months. You’ll be dead. Yeah. Well, you’ll be this like pathetic sunburned, like fat… Unhappy. Hungover. Cirrhotic. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like that’s your vision. So how long can you have a margarita on a beach? Like maybe you can do that once every six months for like 10 minutes, something like that. It’s not a vision.”

The message is that rest and relaxation alone will not make us happy.

Completing something difficult is what fills you with a sense of accomplishment. Humans should seek challenge. We need to overcome adversity for fulfillment. The obstacle is the way. Rest and relaxation are only gratifying after you’ve earned them.

The Universe

This concept is codified into the laws of nature.

Entropy is a thermodynamic quantity (like energy or temperature), that defines the extent of consolidation of energy. If energy is densely packed and consolidated, we say the system it’s in a low entropy state. If that same energy is spread out, then it’s in a high entropy state. If you think of money as a form of energy (it is), then a large bank account would be low entropy because that energy is consolidated.

The second law of thermodynamics tells us that for any kind of change to occur, the entropy in the universe must increase.

It is possible to lower our own entropy by consolidating energy into our bodies or our bank accounts, but only if we increase the entropy of our surroundings. Some energy must be sacrificed to the surroundings for this change to occur. We call this the heat tax.

In a mechanical sense, the heat tax is friction (literally). Imagine trying to run on ice. Without heat being applied to the surroundings via friction, you don’t go anywhere. No change. Extend this idea further and imagine a universe without friction… energy would ever be wasted but also nothing would ever change.

Growth in the system (you) will not occur unless energy is spread to the surroundings. If you want to grow, you need to lean into the friction. The obstacle is the way.