What does it mean to choose life?

It sounds simple enough. But put that question in the middle of a conflict—when you feel threatened, when someone hurts you, when everything in you wants to fight back—and it becomes a practice.

This question was at the heart of a recent conversation I had with Eytan Ben-Meir Sensei, together with our friend and colleague Daniel Herman Sensei. We met to discuss Eytan’s book, Choose Life, and the understanding that has emerged through more than five decades of Aikido practice.

What unfolded was a candid conversation about ego, struggle, meaning, and our responsibility for how we meet the world.

The Choice in the Middle of Conflict

The central inspiration for Eytan’s book comes from Deuteronomy:

“Therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live.”

For Eytan, this passage points toward an active responsibility. We have to discern what supports life and then act on that understanding. Again and again. In the actual circumstances we find ourselves in.

This is where the connection to Aikido becomes compelling.

As martial artists, we train to meet an attack. We develop the ability to protect ourselves, affect another person’s balance, and bring a confrontation under control. As our capacity develops, so does our responsibility for how we use it.

Can we protect ourselves while also taking care of the person attacking us?

That is a demanding proposition. It asks us to remain connected in the very moment we are inclined to separate. It asks us to find enough freedom within the struggle to make a conscious choice.

Sometimes we have to act decisively. Sometimes force is necessary. The practice is to feel what the situation requires and respond with as little unnecessary harm as possible.

Choosing life becomes something we do with our whole being.

We Learn Through the Body

One of the points Eytan made that stayed with me concerns how we learn.

Much of our education begins with an explanation. We receive an idea, try to understand it, and then look for ways to apply it.

In Aikido, understanding often develops in the other direction.

We take hold of a wrist. We receive pressure. We lose our balance. We discover that the harder we try to force something, the less freely we can move.

Over time, our bodies begin to recognize another possibility.

We feel the difference between forcing and connecting. We discover how unnecessary tension interferes with our response. We begin to sense the amount of effort a particular moment requires.

The intellectual understanding may come later. First, something changes in how we move and relate.

This is one of the gifts of practice. The principles become available to us through direct experience. With repetition, they can begin to inform how we meet life beyond the dojo.

The Ego Comes Onto the Mat Too

Of course, stepping onto the mat does not automatically make us wise.

Eytan was refreshingly honest about this. He described his early attraction to fighting and his desire to become stronger, more capable, and harder to defeat. Even as his Aikido developed, his need to win remained powerful.

At one point, he recalled, his training partners stopped inviting him to their informal fighting challenges. He was willing to do whatever it took to avoid losing.

There is something here for all of us to recognize.

We bring our existing patterns into practice: our fear, ambition, insecurity, pride, and need for control. We may become technically proficient while continuing to act from those patterns.

The struggle offers us an opportunity to see them.

What happens when my technique fails? When my partner refuses to cooperate? When someone challenges my understanding?

These moments reveal where our freedom ends and our conditioning takes over. They also give us somewhere to practice.

Meaning and the Work of Changing Ourselves

Eytan also spoke about a long personal struggle with depression and the question of why we exist.

He described a turning point in 2001, while driving to work in California. Outwardly, everything looked the same. Inwardly, his relationship to life had shifted. He experienced a sense of meaning and a conviction that his task was to choose good and actively do it.

He shared this as his own experience. What interested me was how he connected that experience to responsibility.

He spoke about the limits of trying to correct other people, and the importance of working on ourselves.

That brings us back to the mat.

We cannot control every intention our partner brings. We can become more aware of what we bring: how we hold tension, where we resist, when we become aggressive, and whether we can stay present under pressure.

The work is immediate and personal. It begins here.

When the Principles Become Part of Us

Toward the end of our conversation, we explored Takemusu Aiki.

Eytan described it as the point at which the principles have been internalized deeply enough that they emerge naturally in our behavior.

We spend years receiving instruction, repeating forms, and testing our understanding. Gradually, there may be moments when we no longer need to search for a response. Our training expresses itself through our relationship with what is happening.

The ethical dimension of practice can mature in the same way.

Compassion, connection, and restraint become capacities we can draw upon under pressure. They become part of how we stand, move, listen, and act.

That takes time. And it asks us to keep practicing precisely where it is difficult.

Choosing Life, Again

Perhaps the most challenging part of our conversation came when Eytan spoke about supporting the flourishing of those we consider our enemies.

Here in Israel, that question has real weight. It touches grief, fear, loyalty, and the need to protect those we love.

It is easy to speak about harmony when nothing is at stake. The deeper practice begins when something is.

Can we maintain boundaries and protect life while remaining connected to the humanity of another? Can we recognize when our wish to prevail begins to create unnecessary harm?

These questions deserve to stay alive in our practice.

For me, that is the invitation in this conversation: to examine what our training is making possible in the moments that matter.

On the mat, in our relationships, and in the conflicts we find ourselves facing, we have another opportunity to choose.

May our practice help us choose life.

Watch the full conversation with Eytan Ben-Meir Sensei and Daniel Herman Sensei in the video at the top.

Go Deep.

Miles