On The Joe Rogan Experience, Host Joe Rogan talked with Academy Award Winner, Actor, Director Bradley Cooper about having kids. Without having kids, Bradley admitted, “I don’t think I would be alive.” Joe and Bradley agreed that having children changed their capacity for love.
Joe said, “It also made me think of everyone as a baby… Oh, this is a baby that became a person.”
He said, “I give people way more grace, because of that.”
Bradley said, “It’s hard for me to hate people. It’s hard for me not to feel for any other human being for how hard it is to be alive. It is. Even for people, who are mean to me. It’s hard for me to stay mad at them. As I get older.”
Joe shared advice his wife gave their daughter, “It’s hard to be a person.”
Joe said, “Yeah, being a person is hard.”
I didn’t have children. Many years ago, I didn’t want to be become the father, who my Dad was for me. I didn’t want my children to suffer what I had, even with my best intentions not to be like my Dad. So, I chose not to get married, not to have children. Given who I’ve become, who I am now, that might have not been the best choice at the time. The past is the past. Lady MacBeth said, “What’s done cannot be undone.”
On my journey, in Aikido training with the late Mizukami Sensei and Ishibashi Sensei, in therapy with Lance Miller, in writing for the Good Men Project with editor Lisa Hickey, and in just living life, I get it: It’s hard being a person. For me. For everyone. It’s even harder being a good person. Although, that’s the profound journey.
Over a lifetime, I’ve learned to and practice not to hate people. I practice that everyday. I have to. If someone attacks me, is mean to me, or hates me, that’s all on me. Not on them. Aikido Founder O-Sensei Morihei Ueshiba said, “True victory is victory over oneself.” The late Kobayashi Sensei said, “When someone attacks you, they are asking for your help.” Cognard Hanshi said that we heal the space between us.
It’s never me against them. It’s only me against me. I work on myself, not on others, not on them. That’s all I can do. I have nothing to do with what goes on inside someone else. I determine what goes on inside me.
Ishibashi Sensei said, “The purpose of Aikido is to release your fear.” He said, “The safest place to be is under the attack, in the danger.” When the bigger stronger man attacks, I wait it out. I enter the attack, enter what I fear. I take a glancing blow if I have to. I’m not always going to get away scot-free. It’s one time.
I hold my position under the attack, in the danger. I make my distance. Make my timing. I apply the Aikido technique to myself, not to the attacker. I open up. Open my heart. I let go my fear inside that I’m not good enough. My fear as 8-year-old Jon of Dad. I let it go over, and over, and over again. Although that fear inside never completely disappears, it becomes less and less. I free myself more and more.
When I’m quiet inside, I have peace inside. No hate inside me. There is no fight. There never has to be one. It’s hard being a person. I get it, because we’re the same. I can have love inside. I can have love outside for people. When I get that everyone tries their best, that being a person is hard, really hard, I have love for everyone, including me. When we all do that the world a better place, too.
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Photo by Andrew Spencer on Unsplash
