Last night (at the time of publishing this is at least a week ago, if not longer) we watched The Martian (based on the book by Andy Weir, directed by Ridley Scott, starring Matt Damon). The story is about an astronaut (Mark Watney, played by Damon) that gets left behind on Mars when his crew mates mistake him for dead while escaping an unexpected martian dust storm. Well, surprise, dudes — turns out Watney’s survived the dust storm and has woken up completely and utterly alone on Mars without a way off the planet.

The story then follows the drama around what happens next for Watney. Does he have enough water and food? How about medical supplies? Porn? And will anyone find out that he’s still alive? It all makes for a fun watch - I’d recommend it.

Now I don’t mean to brag.. but I did read the book (and yes, it’s obviously better than the movie) and have watched the movie before (maybe a couple times, even). But this time around I found myself better able to understand why I enjoy this story so much, using parallels/alignments between Mark Watney’s (eventual?) escape from Mars, and ultimately things I believe as part of my core value/belief system.

SPOILERS AHEAD - FOR THE MARTIAN AND FOR LIFE

The Martian hooks you in by the way Watney’s survival arc starts: by growing potatoes on Mars in human shit. Oh, but it doesn’t stop there.

The story continues as Watney just keeps crushing obstacles (and as could be expected on an alien planet, there are many) — some things go perfectly, new problems keep on fucking popping up. He needs to find a way to communicate with Earth. He remembers prior missions had some old comms equipment that could still be working (how convenient), so he comes up with a way to pimp his old dusty no battery-life having rover into one that could be solar charged. Once Mark gets in touch with Earth, we get a tag team effort of nerds from around the world. They all are stressing out a lot about how they can get to Mark Watney before he runs out of shit-taytos. And ultimately they’re able to come up with, some how, some way, a crazy plan to execute the perfect rescue.

As the story unfolds and you see plans being executed, failing, adjusted, then succeeding, all based on what the mission is, and what can/cannot be done to achieve it. I think the left brain side of me gets a huge boner from seeing a plan come together. It’s kind of like watching a complex array of dominoes go down. And when I first watched this movie, I think that was the main takeaway for me: smart people can get shit done because they have the tools/knowledge to do the things they do.

And while I enjoyed reading about characters and drama like this, I found it difficult to really identify with the story/character. There was always that layer of comparing myself against the characters in the book. Great people do great things and they get books written about them. Or fantastic stories that we imagine up, based on traces of real life that we can use for reference. But all these things, they weren’t me, they weren’t my experience. It’s not to say that I’m a stranger to dreaming of doing great things.

In my playing days, I used to daydream of playing big-time college ball somewhere. Maybe even go pro! Be a Steve Tasker type - a Special Teams monster. Screaming down the field with reckless abandon - sore neck, knees, shoulders and back be damned. CTE? Probably.

Eventually, the playing days are over, and I’m looking to start another story. But committing to any particular path seems daunting, especially considering all of the things that I’m told I’m supposed to start doing after I graduate. Eventually I fell into the trap - of feeling like life was pay to play, if only I had that next thing, it would be better if…

And that’s around the time I encountered The Martian. Of course at that point in my life I was still very much in the camp of “I know everything” and just assumed that because I was good at trivia and knew how the internet worked that automatically put me in the top quartile of intellect. And as long as I could feel superior to others in at least that respect (an important one, perhaps the most important of the measures of a man - I assure you! jk), that would somehow automatically qualify me for a life “better than”. As long as I had the comfort of knowing that some poor sod has it worse, I was ok with that. How sad.

I have to admit I felt that way up until recently. Life has a funny way of continuing to flow by and it will let you live however you allow yourself to live. The world is as you see it. It’s up to you. As for me, I had to wait almost 40 years to have that switch in my understanding finally click over to where I understood that “I” is a concept that exists only inside of our individual heads, and that the reality is that each “individual” is just an expression of the same spark of consciousness, or life, just wrapped in an infinitely varied configuration of life experiences. That if “I” were in Mark Watney’s shoes, that I would have done the same damn thing! Coming to this understanding has brought me such peace with everything — serenity. This is the good shit.

The story hasn’t changed. Nothing else has been written. But now I find myself better equipped to draw parallels between my lived experience and the movie. Super enjoyable. For example, I can identify with Mark Watney’s ability to remain calm under pressure through my Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) practice. I feel that the ability to keep my head in a crisis is a virtue, and I believe it’s something I am able to train, exercise, and practice feeling through BJJ.

In case you aren’t familiar, BJJ is a martial art that emphasizes the use of grappling, leverage, and special techniques to control your opponent. When you’re rolling (sparring) in BJJ, you are tangled with your opponent in a game of domination where the winner forces the loser to give up or submit. The game can be won or lost in those key moments of a match when pressure is on - the choke is starting to squeeze the blood flow off from your brain, the armbar is getting dangerously close to the point of “oh, it’s not supposed to go that way”. And being able to remain in the flow state where all you are focused on is what to do next in the face of all of that? That’s the ability to stay calm expressed.

But I do strongly believe that the ability to stay calm is something that can be improved with practice. And it’s not exclusive to BJJ. I have a hunch that the ability to remain calm under pressure is very much a physically intertwined attribute, and practicing it may require some sort of bodily manipulation. Regardless, by practicing remaining calm you gain the ability to think more clearly and creatively about any and all situations you may find yourself in and how to improve your position.

Also, it’s not to say that remaining calm means never tapping or never losing/giving up ground. The goal is to remain calm, and accurately assess the situation, but giving yourself enough room to see if there’s any hope to advance. That last bit - the ability to hope to advance - is something that can be extremely difficult to tap into if you aren’t remaining calm. And if you don’t remain calm it also becomes more difficult to observe how/why you got into trouble in the first place.

If you don’t remain calm in life, it can become easy to lose sight of what it is that you want in any given moment, and it can be difficult to understand what loops you may be caught in that are causing you to find yourself in situations you no longer want to be in.

So remember:

Always remain calm under pressure. And keep on hoping to advance. If it worked for Mark Watney, it will work for you, too.