equipoise

sample chapter…

origin story: the fog of life

If you want to understand the truth in martial arts you must first throw away the notion of styles or schools, prejudices, likes and dislikes, and so forth. Then, your mind will cease all conflict and come to rest. In this silence, you will see totally and freshly.

Bruce Lee

Graduation from high school is usually pitched as an exciting time, bursting with promise and potential, a pivotal transition, even a breakthrough into the grand adventure of adulthood. The future beckons, we’re told, bursting with possibility and a wealth of opportunity. Just imagine the wonders that lie ahead. Seize the day, they told us. It’s going to be great. Congratulations, and good luck to all of you.

But for me, graduation was nothing of the sort. Adulthood loomed like a dark and unknowable cavern, an incomprehensible quagmire of impossible choices, unknowable rules, and severe consequences for error. Anxiety flooded my mind and body. How could I possibly sort out the arcane, byzantine mechanics of employment, housing, taxes, and a career, not to mention the almost unimaginable challenge of finding a romantic life partner? I was struck by a sense of paralysis and even despair. Surely there had to be a way out.

Even more perplexing was the prospect of navigating the interpersonal conflicts that seemed to be everywhere in the adult world. Aside from the trivial counsel to “be nice” and “do what you’re told,” I had no idea what to do when faced with social disagreements or differences of opinion. Should I stand up and fight back? Should I yield and let people have their way? Mom said “don’t fight” but Dad said “don’t lose” and in a world that seemed altogether unpredictable to my young mind, the question always loomed: Should I be a fighter or a lover? No one seemed to have much of an answer.

Perhaps these confusions are common, but mine was not the garden variety anxiety that afflicts every high school graduate. At the time, the Cold War was hot and the prospect of nuclear disaster seemed all too real. The Vietnam war raged, and I could see my college-aged elders fighting back against a system that seemed hell-bent on sending an entire generation to an early death. The Watergate scandal eroded our trust in government and to make matters worse, I could see the early signs of ecological collapse. Books like Silent Spring and The Population Bomb promised a bleak and dangerous future. How could I possibly find my way in a society that was actively destroying its own life support system? Should I fight back? Should I work inside the system or outside it? Should I go to law school or learn to monkeywrench bulldozers? What were the most sensible strategies and tactics?

Sadly, things were little better in college. My classes were comprehensive and demanding, but practical life lessons were rare. I learned all about human biology and life systems on the brink, but functional advice was almost non-existent. Reading between the lines, all I could gather was that I was expected to do research, write papers, get published and maybe in some mysterious, yet-to-be revealed way, the process would somehow move the needle on the world. Such as it was, my education didn’t really satisfy my craving for real-world function. I was still adrift, anxious, and unprepared for what lay ahead.

So it was that I made my way off campus and stumbled into to a local martial art school, a modest shopping mall dojo that advertised “a philosophical approach.” I had heard some rumors about the wisdom of the East and I wondered how the monks of the Shaolin temple might deal with the ambiguities and atrocities of the modern age. Surely, I thought, this would be a source for some genuine life lessons, a place where I could finally get some guidance on the nature of conflict and relationship. Maybe, at long last, I could get some answers to my questions about fighting and living.

At first, things seemed promising. My dojo offered classes in basic karate and I dove into the process with enthusiasm. Our sensei gave us instruction in the mechanics of punching and kicking and how to fight back if assaulted. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was a hard style approach. If attacked, use your body as a weapon and meet force with force. “Be strong! Be powerful!” my sensei barked. I assumed that he knew what he was doing and I followed along as best I could. After six years of dedicated training, I earned my black belt and at last, I had a sense that maybe I could find my way in the world.

But the feeling soon evaporated. Life led me to a new town and a new dojo, an aikido school where the game was completely different. Now the objective was to re-direct an attacker’s force using a soft, paradoxical style. “Be non-resistant” our teachers advised. “Don’t interfere with your attacker. Don’t block, kick, or punch. Shift your position and guide your attacker into a safe place.” Suddenly, I was a beginner once again and as my new sensei bluntly put it, everything I knew about martial art was wrong.

Not only did this orientation challenge my athletic skill, it also sent me into another spiral of confusion. What is the right way to respond to conflict? What’s the best course of action out in the real world where disagreements are complex and dynamic, but rarely physical? What about managing the demands or romance, business, or even international relations? Is it better to meet force with force or blend and re-direct? Yield or push back? Now I was completely at my wits end. When your master teachers disagree with one another about the right course of action in the face of ambiguity, how could I possibly choose?

Not surprisingly, I struggled. The aikido philosophy of blending and re-directing seemed ideal, but it also struck me as aspirational and even utopian. Out in the real world, such responses would require immense levels of training, skill, sensitivity, and sophistication. At the same time, it was easy to imagine situations in which a simple, direct, hard-style rebuke would be appropriate. Depending on the circumstances, saying “No” with the full weight of mind and body might well be the most intelligent and effective course of action. So what were the right answers?

Digging deeper into the philosophy and psychology of conflict, I encountered the writings of Carl von Clausewitz and his legendary description of “the fog of war.” It was easy for me to imagine how unknowable conditions could be on the battlefield, but as I saw it, the murk was everywhere. There’s the fog of interpersonal relationships and romance, the fog of money and economics, the fog of society and culture, and now more than ever, the fog of ecological degradation and civilizational collapse, a world of increasingly inconvenient truths and impossible dilemmas. Everywhere I looked, I was surrounded by ambiguity, uncertainty, and unknown unknowns.

But as the years passed, my understanding evolved. Maybe the art wasn’t really about the superiority of any particular technique, but more about the way we move through the world. After all, assailants and relationships are fundamentally unpredictable and, as Heraclitus would surely have noted, conditions are always changing; we can’t step into the same relational river twice. Or, as one iteration has it, “no man ever fights the same dragon twice.”

Likewise, there can be no single style, technique, or strategy that works in every circumstance. Hard style or soft? Neither answer is correct. People love to argue about the superiority of one style or another, but ultimately, the only thing that really matters is adaptability, athleticism, and psycho-physical integration, the capability to do precisely what the situation demands. In other words, a creative, opportunistic, both-and approach.

This is something that Bruce Lee understood instinctively. Frustrated with the narrow, rigid practices of existing training styles, he sought something more fundamental. Instead of supposing that an assailant would attack in a particular way, he cleared his mind to embrace all possibilities. An assailant might do anything at all and it’s impossible to predict what might happen. And, if an attacker is capable of anything, we too must be ready to respond with whatever the situation demands. We might even say that conventional training styles actually move students in the wrong direction. Instead of opening them up to possibility, they narrow the options and leave us even more vulnerable than before.

So it was that Lee created an entirely new approach, one he called jeet kune do, a style of no style, no preference, and no inclination. For Lee, the ultimate metaphor for action was to be found, not in any particular method, but in the power and adaptability of water. As he famously described it, “Water can flow or it can crash. Be like water my friend.”

Likewise, we see a similar theme in Lee’s legendary martial art classic “Enter the Dragon.” When Lee’s teacher asks “What is the highest technique you hope to achieve?” he responds “To have no technique.” In other words, the ultimate practice doesn’t lie in any particular method or movement, but rather in the psycho-physical disposition we bring to the encounter. The art lies, not in the execution, but in the state of our minds and bodies in the moments before the decisive act. In this sense, the act itself is somewhat secondary; the goal must always be composure, balance and adaptability. In other words, equipoise.

Of course, Bruce Lee didn’t really have anything to say about today’s monumental challenges–threats like climate change, ecological overshoot, or the catastrophic degradation of our life-support systems. Nor did he have much to say about the perplexing challenges of conflicted interpersonal relationships. Nevertheless, the martial art metaphor still provides us with much-needed guidance. At every level of the human experience, all our relational experiences are marked by uncertainty and ambiguity, and all of them demand flexible presence. No matter the domain, there must be times for the water to flow and times for it to crash. We must be capable of both.

This is something that the ancients–particularly those in the Eastern tradition–knew well. Over the course of centuries, teachers crafted a range of disciplines that emphasized the importance of balance, poise, and attention, even ahead of any particular skill development. Showing up with honor and dignity was held as a high value and was practiced intensively. But unfortunately, modern culture is rapidly moving in another direction entirely. The practice of equipoise–showing up with dignity and presence, taking responsibility and paying attention to the world and the people around us–is fast becoming a lost art.

Living in a state of chronic distraction and hyper-stimulation, our ability to exercise equipoise is rapidly being degraded by a high-speed transactional culture that puts profit and efficiency ahead of almost every other consideration. In our frenzy to be more productive, we become frantic, running from one task to the next, always putting outcome and ends over means and process.

Even worse, we’re living with deep and widespread denial about the scope, magnitude, and severity of our ecological predicament. We scarcely even talk about the nature of the challenge or how we might adapt. To put it bluntly, we’re not really showing up, even for our own long-term survival. We’ve become escape artists of our own condition. Ghosting has become a widespread, even default way to deal with the world at large. We’re not just ghosting other people, we’re also ghosting society our future, and even ourselves. We’re sleepwalking into catastrophe.

To be sure, an emphasis on equipoise does survive in some areas of modern life. It sometimes appears in the world of sport and athletics, in martial art, yoga, theatre, dance, public speaking, and even in the military. Thousands of teachers and coaches understand, either explicitly or implicitly, that their job description goes beyond basic skill development. But even in these domains, the art of showing up is increasingly overshadowed by secondary considerations: profit, status, clicks and views, rewards and amusement. Disembodied and dehumanized by glowing screens and an always-on lifestyle, we’ve forgotten the most fundamental skills of all: how to sit, how to stand, how to walk, and most importantly, how to show up with undivided attention. In the process, we’re in very real danger of losing contact with our animal nature and our ability to live and act in the present moment.

It may seem odd to think of equipoise–an internal state of mind and body–as any kind of solution to the big ecological and social issues of our day. You might well say that we have bigger fish to fry–large scale policy decisions about energy, transportation, land-use policy, industrial agriculture, and economic injustice. It’s also true that equipoise alone isn’t going to move the needle on carbon emissions, habitat destruction, biodiversity depletion, authoritarian rule, or social chaos.

Nevertheless, spirit is vitally important now, especially in light of the catastrophic state of mental, social, and ecological health around the world. Struggling to cope with the overwhelming stress, complexity, and chaos of modern conditions, the human animal is falling into depression, anxiety, escapism, addiction, and attention disorders. In 2025, the Global Mind Health Report found that “across the globe, mind health is in crisis,” particularly among young people. This increased level of pain and dysfunction renders us increasingly powerless to do anything at all, much less transform the big systems that drive so much of our suffering. When the future feels overwhelming, we retreat from engagement and delay the inevitable reckoning. We stop showing up for ourselves and the world around us.

This is why it would be a mistake to think of equipoise as just another lifestyle hack or a wellness solution for people seeking a performance edge. Showing up is going to become increasingly challenging in years to come, but it will also become increasingly meaningful. As conditions deteriorate, the pressure for escapism of all varieties will increase radically. Ecological and social degradation will bring increased pressure to bear on our spirits, and more and more of us will be looking for a way out. And in this state, equipoise will become an essential, revolutionary, pro-future act.

This is why we need remedial education in the fundamentals, reminding ourselves of what it means to bring ourselves back into presence and engagement. It sounds basic and it is, but the real beauty of this approach is that it promises to give us back some of what we’ve lost. Equipoise isn’t just the ideal fighting state, it’s also an ideal learning state and an ideal relational state. Action that comes from a place of equipoise is more likely to be effective, functional, satisfying, and meaningful than action that comes from stress, fear, anxiety, habit, or desperation. In other words, equipoise doesn’t just feel better, it also gives us better life outcomes.

And in a world that is mostly beyond our control, our presence is something we can control. We are not powerless. We may not have much leverage on the great social and ecological challenges of our day, but we can mostly control how we show up. No matter how bad things get in our personal lives or on the planet as a whole, we can still have a say in our attitude, our posture, and our perspective. In turn, this sense of control becomes a powerful tonic that’s good for our minds, our bodies, and the people around us. As you’ll see, the experience of showing up in equipoise is its own reward. We do it because it’s a better way to relate to the world and the experience of being alive. It’s simply a better way to live.