Fighting has always, for me, been more of a mental thing than a physical thing. It is deliciously counterintuitive, but it is an absolute reality. When you see a punch from a distance, you imagine the pain to a be an abstract thing, purely physical, capable of leaving bruises and breaking bones. What you don't understand is that the most difficult scars to heal from are the mental ones, the ones you don't see in movies, the ones that only people who have fought have to carry with them.
I can't say that I've been there. I've been fortunate enough to have been almost scuffle free outside of my dojo, and inside my dojo every bruise has come from a friend that wasn't intending to leave one. But the world is not as kind. There are many people who come from tough environments, and they have to learn how to survive on the streets where people take advantage of each other in very early stages of life. Fights break out in elementary school, parents are in prison, and political systems are far less just. So how do you cope when the world does not have the cards stacked in your favor?
In my opinion, you have to learn how to fight. If you're a man, you have to become an animal, as tough as nails. If you're a woman, you have to learn to pick your spots, and attack unrelentingly. But in both cases, you have to understand that it CAN happen to you, and you CAN find yourself in trouble when you least suspect it.
Aside from the obvious self defense aspect of fighting, I think that any martial arts, when done with the correct amount of restraint, can be very beneficial in structuring an identity for yourself. For instance, when you reach a certain level as a martial artist, you will most likely end up teaching other people at some point. This teaching can be massively beneficial to your personal life, because most of our lives, we teach people what we learn academically, not anything we learn that has us use our bodies. In teaching people techniques, we realize that many people have certain bodily limitations, or even bodily talents, that we don't possess for ourselves. Whereas in academia, this sort of talent is abstracted, intelligence is far harder to grasp than physical talent, in martial arts and sports in general, this is clear as daylight. This process of teaching gives us a sort of "bodily" empathy, and makes us recognize our own bodies from different perspectives. Concepts like speed, strength, and accuracy become engrained in us as Hollywood movie goers, but never a detail of what any of that means, and how it is different for different people. There is also the matter of height, weight, flexibility, rotation, footwork, etc. Every physical process becomes more clear as you teach, and, as you become more advanced, it helps you recognize abstractions like intelligence, kindness, and perseverance with more wisdom and authority.
In fact, balance is a central part of of being a martial artist. You could be a great guy, but not finish what you said you were going to do. You could be a gifted musician, but not have the work ethic to back it up. Even if martial arts doesn't directly address these issues, learning how to fight innately makes you humble, and you will at least admit to yourself that you may have these issues, and that they can be resolved.
There was a time, when I was a kid, when I was afraid of the dark. I would be paranoid about phantoms that existed in my mind, demons that would punish me for not being a good person, or worse, not trying to be a good person. After many years of martial arts, that fundamental fear is gone, and what I learned is that all fear is associated with the unknown and how you deal with the unknown when you are helpless. It made me more of a man of action, and somebody who would be able to help somebody else if they were being treated unjustly.
It may sound cliched to many that learning how to fight can make you a better person, and, I will admit, it's not always the case. But I will also say that it is mostly the case, and that when you are weak and you become stronger over a period of time, the motive most people have is not to oppress those who are weak, but to protect them, because they were there once too.
Fighting for what is right is what separates us from animals. Lately, people don't have spines because they want to save their own skins, and empathy for one's neighbor is at an all time low. But I think that way of living is not adequate if humans, as a social species, want to progress. The best advancements we have made as a society have been when talented, driven people have worked together, and when we didn't have to walk the streets in fear because one of those peoples' lives could be taken away by malicious forces at any given moment. Preventing evil from occurring is a discussion for another time, but my point is learning how to confront evil and not shy away from it should be a necessity rather than an afterthought.
