I was listening to a podcast with a Harvard psychologist named Dr. Ellen Langer and she casually dropped this line that stuck in me:

“The more different you are the more important it is for you to find your own way to do things.”

It’s an elegant way to summarize something that I’ve been feeling and thinking about vaguely for a long time.

In Jiu Jitsu, it showed up another way. I distinctly remember that when I first started, there was a way in which the instructors spoke that surprised me a little. They would often preface instructions with statements like: “I like to do it this way. . . “ or  “For me I have more success like this. . ." I remember it striking me as odd, but not in a bad way, because I had been under the impression that there was a right and a wrong way to do everything. I’d assumed that “Jiu-Jitsu” consisted of a family of techniques, all of which had been meticulously honed over time, and all of which had a strict sequence of steps. If it worked, it meant you did the steps right. If it didn’t it meant you messed something up. I believed that all the technique in the world was already set in stone and all I had to do was memorize and internalize it.

When the instructors started saying things like that, I realized that it indicated that they too, even at their highly advanced level, saw variation and uncertainty in the techniques. It indicated that there might not be just one way to do these things. Looking back, this insight seems almost trivial. Of course, if two people have vastly different body sizes and shapes, the mechanics of one technique will never be identical for both of them. But it signaled a subtle shift in the way I understood learning, in that it almost gave me permission to be my own explorer. It helped me discard the notion that there was a “right” and a “wrong” way of doing everything. I realized that the techniques were just guiding principles, and it was up to me to take them and apply them as I charted my own course.

Another example: when I was a kid someone told me the “right” way to swing a golf club was to interlace the pinky and forefinger together as you gripped the club. I always thought it felt awkward and unnatural, but the few times we went to the driving range I would dutifully interlace my fingers and then miss the ball (yes, miss the ball entirely, I never said I was good) 90% of the time. One day, without thinking, I just grabbed the club and swung naturally without any interlacing. The ball sailed straight for 80-100 yards. But the ridiculous thing is that I went back to doing it the other way because it was “right”. I ignored the glaringly obvious results in front of me because of some idea of right and wrong that someone else had given me.

Dr. Langer also had this wonderful example: what’s 1+1? Most people would confidently say 2. Most people take this as a mathematical fact, categorical and self-evidently true.

But what happens, Dr. Langer asks, if you take one cloud and combine it with one cloud? You still have one cloud. What happens if you combine one pile of laundry with one pile of laundry? You have one pile of laundry. One wad of chewing gum with one wad of chewing gum? One mound of soil?

Sometimes, my friends, not even 1+1 is set in stone. To me, this is liberating because it opens up an infinite realm of possibility. It’s also scary because it means I can’t rely on the objective world to always be, well, objective.

So what should you do with this information? If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll understand that I can’t give you an answer. You are, however, blessedly free to find your own. Good luck and have fun :)