Episode 391 - A Real World Scenario with Sensei Ando
On this episode, Jeremy talks with Sensei Ando Mierzwa about an episode on his podcast, Fight for a Happy Life.
A Real World Scenario with Sensei Ando - Episode 391
Most of us wish that our house won't get robbed or encounter a thief on the streets. But what would you do if you encounter one? On this episode, Jeremy talks with Sensei Ando Mierzwa about his experience helping an individual to catch a thief who robbed a car and what other people did. Listen to learn Sensei Ando's amazing story!
Show Notes
You can check the episode of Fight for a Happy Life here.
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below or download here.Jeremy Lesniak:Hey, everybody! Welcome, this is whistlekick martial arts radio. Jeremy coming at you. Episode 391 and we’re doing something a little bit different today, something special, I have back on the show, fellow podcaster, friend, wonderful martial artist and amazing contributor to the martial arts community, Sensei Ando. Welcome back, Sensei!Ando Mierzwa:Mister Jeremy Lesniak, it is an honor to be here, sir. Thank you very much for having me.Jeremy Lesniak:Hey, it's an honor to have you and we may have some listeners out there scratching their heads, saying, wait a second, this is a different kind of intro, it's a Thursday, we’re getting another person’s voice, what is going on because I am completely blowing away anything that we do with any kind of format and I think we have to explain what’s going on so here’s what’s going on, a couple weeks ago, I was in the car driving to a martial arts event, big surprise there, right? And I think a lot of people know, maybe they don’t, is that a lot of what I do in the car is listening to podcasts and some of the podcasts I listen to are, no surprise, martial arts podcasts and yours is in that list because your show is one of my favorites.Ando Mierzwa:Very kind of you, thank you.Jeremy Lesniak:And on this particular day, you had episode 70, which you titled Catching Another Thief and it struck me. A lot of times, and maybe you have this happen to you, listeners, I bet you have this happen to you where you're listening to something and it's just kind of there, just kind of background noise whether it's music or podcast but this episode really was like a kick in the head and why don’t you tell the listeners about what this episode was?Ando Mierzwa:Well, sure. It was basically just a hey, a tale from the real streets. Oh my gosh! Something actually happened. A lot of us who are not bouncers or police officers, we get caught up in the theory world a lot or I think I would do this and we just had a chance to do a little something. Fortunately, it wasn’t overly violent, there was no weapon or multiple attacker type of situation but it was something unexpected in our real life and my wife and I, that’s when my wife and I had to step up and take a little action to help apprehend a bad guy and in the course of doing that, I learned a couple things about myself. Some things about my wife and some things about the public at large. Some bad, some not so good.Jeremy Lesniak:So, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to run the episode, your episode now, and then, listeners, if you stick around after that, Sensei Ando and I will be here and we’re going to have some conversation kind of a bit of a debrief. I want to share my thoughts and we’ll have a bit of a conversation about it.Ando Mierzwa:I love it. Hey there, welcome to episode number 70 of Fight for A Happy Life. The show that believes even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better. Ando here and once again, I'm recording today’s episode as an audio podcast and on video. I hope one of these two formats is easy for you. Either way, it's going to be a great show. I've got a story to tell you today about bringing a real life bad guy to justice. My wife and I actually helped bring down a scumbag. I want to tell you that story and tell you what I learned. I got a lot to say about this so let me grab a quick shot of coffee here and we’ll get right to it. First off, the title of this episode is Catching Another Thief. That’s because you might recall the story I told in episode number 50 about coming home and catching two punks breaking into my wife’s car and my car behind our building. In that story, I ended up chasing them down, I squared up with one of them. We kept barking at each other until eventually we heard police sirens and the guy bolted and I had to ID him. The cops caught him and they took him away. As a little update on this story, I still, even though this was almost two years ago, I still have not received my flash light back or the multitool that were taken out of my glove compartment so in effect, I still have been robbed, just not by the punks. By the cops. Alright, so what happened this time? This time, I went to the movies with my wife and I should back up here one step to let you know that I had thrown out my back so I was limping and my wife had just come back from a snowboarding trip the day before and she tweaked her ankle so she was also limping. It's kind of a pathetic scene. So, my wife and I are coming out of a movie theater, it's about 9:30 at night and we’re holding hands like a cute old couple. Anyway, we’re limping along and it was a cold night so my wife didn’t want to walk outside on street level to get back to our car. She said, hey, why don’t we just stay at the underground level? So, we’re walking in the underground level of a parking garage and that’s when we heard it. Someone started yelling, stop that guy! He broke into my car! Stop that guy! Sure enough, we looked over at the next lane, there were cars in between us and this guy’s booking like he’s returning a kickoff at the Super Bowl. He’s got a backpack and he’s hustling so in this moment, slow down here for a second, having already been through this situation once before, I'm thinking okay, do I really want to chase this guy? This is a property crime, not a personal crime. In the other episode, it was my car so there was a little ego involved, a little personally offended, there was also the issue of self-esteem. I was worried that my wife might think I was a wimp if I didn’t go chase those punks. But in this case, it's not our stuff. It's just stuff so as I'm kind of watching this guy run by, I'm thinking, I'm not sure if I’m going to…too late, my wife takes off. So, it didn’t matter what I thought. My wife started taking off after the guy and obviously, now, I'm in. A hundred percent, I’m in. Alright, so she takes off and, as a funny side note here, it turned out, her intention was not to catch the guy. I, of course, thought that’s what she was thinking. Her intention was just to kind of keep bringing attention to what was going on, to keep screaming hey, hey, hey and just kind of wave her arms and get attention but I thought she was going to make a run for the guy. So, anyway, we both take off and I start hustling and because we’re in this underground lot, there’s really only one or two ways in or out of this place and the way out was going to be right in front of me. This guy as going to have to cross right in front of me to get to the exit. So, I'm tracking him, I'm ahead of my wife now. What the heck, I'm fast. So, I get up to the front and he stumbles and by the way, that happened in the other story too. If you're a thief, you might want to practice your sprinting with stuff because apparently it's hard to coordinate when you're under stress. So, anyway, the guy is coming round the bend and I'm lined up right with him, it's going to be a perfect tackle and the guy stumbles. So, he skids out on his knee for a second and he start scrambling to get up so I catch him about halfway up and I just slam into him with my elbows, boom! I just blast into him. The guy scrambles a little bit more and I'm hovering over him and as he’s getting up, I just slapped on a seatbelt, okay? So, kind of a BJJ deal. A one arm from behind over his shoulder and an under hook on the far arm on the other side and I just start riding him a little bit and I'm trying to keep it cool, right? You have an opportunity here, you could turn it into a choke, you could start punching him in the face, but I'm not. I’m just riding him for a second. I’m like hey, hey, get down, get down. That’s what basically what I'm saying. So, as I'm riding him and putting some weight on him and I'm starting to buckle him down, I break him down to his knees and then my wife jumps on the far side so I’ve got the seatbelt and I grab his far hand, we break him down, and ultimately, we get him down on his belly. So now, I got the seatbelt, I'm sprawled out on one side, my wife kind of just put everything onto his far arm. So, we have a triple control on that far arm. I made it a point, here’s a lesson from the last episode as well, to always follow the hands. Watch the hands. I don’t know if this guy’s got a knife or a gun so I, not only have a seatbelt, but I also have a hand control on that far hand and I doubled up on my own hand, locked it in so he’s not doing anything with that hand. My wife had an under hook on that same arm so I felt safe enough to let go with my left hand and bring that over to my side of his body where I could grab his other wrist, pin that to the ground so he’s really not going anywhere. Technically, since you're probably a martial artist and you're interested in this kind of thing, he was getting a little squirrelly and kept trying to get up so I did also step my knee over his close leg so that I can kind of pinch his leg and control what he was doing with his feet. We had both arms controlled, my weight on one side, my wife on the other, so he was really very well pinned. Now, second lesson that I remembered from the first time, in the other episode, when I chased that punk down, I was completely tunnel visioned on him. I totally forgot that he had had a partner with him, I lost track of where that guy had gone and I was so locked into that guy that I believe I joked that a parade could go by and I wouldn’t have noticed and that’s true but this time was totally the opposite. Because I had this guy very well controlled, I immediately started scanning the area, kept my head up, looking around and I don’t know maybe he has a partner? So, I was very aware of what was going on around me while we’re on the ground. In terms of damage, oh, what did I lose here? I thought I had these broken glasses here. I lost a pair of reading glasses. Those got smashed. I ended up getting a bloody knee that soaked through my jeans because we were grinding on the ground a little bit there. I shouldn’t say we were grinding. I was trying to pin him down and I ended up kind of scuffing up my knee. Anyway, we’re holding him down and to me, this is the interesting part of the story. It's like a Twilight Zone. Because this is a public space, alright, this can be the big point of this podcast. This is a public space. We were in a public parking lot. We end up holding this guy, my wife and I for at least, 10 minutes. It was probably more like 11 or 12 but we end up holding this guy down for a long time and we’re not alone. I would say there were at least 30, maybe as many as 40 people, who were around us while all of this was happening. Now, here’s the weird part. Nobody else helped us. Not even the guy who owned the guy. Not even that guy. That guy had his daughter with him, alright. We’ve just seen Captain Marvel if you're interested and he had this, maybe, 13 year old blonde haired girl, looked like Captain Marvel and she’s standing there with her dad and his friend, another male friend, two dudes and they're standing there, not too close, by the way, about 12 feet back and my wife looks up and says, help us hold him. Help us. The guy who owns the car has his phone on and he says I’m calling the police, I’m calling the police. That’s what he’s doing. His daughter is just standing there and his friend was just watching. His friend with, I believe, purple suede shoes. I was on the ground so I had a good shot of that. Alright, so the actual victims, if you will, of this property crime are not helping us in anyway and my wife’s a woman by the way. I don’t mean to be sexist or anything but to me, if there is a struggle going, a physical struggle and a woman looks up and says, help me, doesn’t any human being, especially if you’re a dude say, yeah, I’ll help you, especially if it's my car or my friend’s car. So, this is the first level of what the hell is going on? But it goes beyond that. In this group of 30 to 40 people, all of whom are not close to us, by the way, they have all decided to stay back like 20, 30 feet. Behind me, to the side of me and across from me all around. In that group, there are at least, 3 uniformed, badged security officers. Not one of them, not one of them helped us. The other fellow seemed to be an employee he was like a valet. He was on the other side, I saw him as well, also not helpful. Not only were they not helpful, at one point, one of the security guards, was a female, came over into my headspace, she leaned in, still about 6 feet away, she leans in and she says, you can't touch him, you have to let him go. I looked up at her and just like this I said, okay, when I let him go and he gets up to run, what are you going to do? She just looked at me, she just faded back, didn’t talk to her again. So, not only, were these people not helpful, they were trying to dissuade us from doing what I still believe to be the right thing. Again, I understand it's a property crime but it's still ultimately a citizen’s arrest of a bad guy so at the end of the day, it was a good thing but no help from the security guards, no help from the victims and now, let’s talk about the public. Okay, no help from the public and again, you have a woman, my wife, 49 year old woman, lying on the ground, nice clothes out for the night, looking up to a bunch of dudes and some women saying help me, help me hold him for over 10 minutes and no. Now, there was one guy who after about 3 or 4 minutes, he was coming out of the gym, Jerron, I believe his name was, shoutout to Jerron, he did come over. So, not everybody is a schmutz or a putz or whatever word you want to make up. This guy did come over and he knelt down behind me and helped just to hold down one of the guy’s legs and at least just was a witness to all of this. This is why I'm so frustrated. I don’t want to get too crazy about this but this is why I'm really frustrated. I totally understand that most people don’t want to get involved in anything. I get that. I've been that guy, myself, particularly my early life. If it's a physical situation that makes it even harder. You see people scrambling on the ground or fighting or it's even a domestic situation where the people really seem to know each other, it's like a family fight and you just think, hey, this is not on me. That’s on you. I get that. I also get that even if you don’t think the situation is relevant to you or is even that dangerous, I understand that when there is physicality and fighting and violence, that most people are not prepared for that in any way and that has its own weight on their mind like oh, no, what’s going to happen, I could get hurt. Not only do they want to stand up and do something even if it was just speaking up, if it's physical there really is a reluctance to get involved because it's just an unknown so I understand that but in this case, again, the guy, the hard part was done. The work was over. We had already taken him down. He was already pinned. As an interesting side note, because there was so much time, you might be wondering well, what was the bad guy doing? He didn’t just give up. Physically he was contained but mentally, he started going through a whole cycle of nonsense. Much like the guy in the other story. At first, when I chased down the other punk in episode 50, that guy started off like the huff and puff and looked like he was menacing and he wanted to hit me and then he saw that strategy wasn’t working, then he went really soft, he’s like oh, we’re cool, man, we’re cool and I said, no, we’re not cool. In this case, the guy, over 10 minutes, I’ll make it quick, the guy started off just by saying I got a 5 year old. Let me go, man, let me go. I got a 5 year old. My wife was really good at trash talk too and she said, hey, we got a 5 year old and we’re not breaking into cars. We don’t have a 5 year old but it was pretty good trash talk. So, after he tried to play the sympathy game and that didn’t work then he started getting, pretending he was the victim. He started saying, somebody call the cops, they’re fucking me up, they're fucking me up and I just kept announcing because again, I was watching, I was looking at everybody, I was being very aware of my surroundings. I just kept saying you're fine, sir and he said, oh, you're choking me, I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe! I said, if you can talk, you can breathe. No one’s being hurt here. I just kept looking around and announcing what was going on. You're the bad guy, we’re the good guys, you're not being hurt, we’re waiting for the police. By the way, when the police show up and eventually they do. 2 SUVs pull in, I can’t remember 3 or 4 cops jumped out. Even they weren’t in a hurry to help. They got out. the guy was adjusting his belt. they're taking their time. they start talking to someone on the periphery before they come over to us? Two citizens laying on top of another guy they’ve been called in from an obvious burglary or some type of crime and they're in no hurry to come over to where the actual guy is? This was also blowing my mind. Anyway, so, my wife and I pinned down this guy. This guy keep screaming all kinds of nonsense about how he’s the victim and he’s the one getting hurt and we have our friend, Jerron, helping us bear witness to all these but I still can't get over how most people, not only didn’t want to get involved, they didn’t even want to come close to at least show support. Again, the bar was so low for you to be a hero in this story. Meaning, you come down the escalator, you're in the parking garage, you see there's something going on, you see that the guy’s already pinned. You know the police have been called and now you see this woman on the ground saying someone help me hold him. All you have to do is come over and put your foot on the guy and you could take a selfie and go, look, I stopped a bad guy today. It would’ve been that easy. Anybody could have come over just put a hand on the guy. You could have just come over and knelt by us and taken a picture if you wanted to and say, hey, I helped bring down a bad guy today but no, these 30 to 40 people, some uniformed security officers and victims of a crime and friend all stayed as far back as possible just to watch, not even talk. I don’t even think anyone got it on a phone. I hope they did. I was looking for the video like I want to see this because I can't believe that nobody helped. Let me get to the bigger point. The bigger point is this: I still believe that most people are good. I truly believe that most people, if you ask them, hey, in a situation like this, would you help? They would say absolutely, of course, I’ll help, what are you talking about? But I'm also doubling down on my belief that most people just are completely unprepared to take action when they need to and this goes to the self-defense training. If you take a little bit of self-defense training, even a little martial arts, I believe that it's easier for you to speak up when you need to, stand up when you need to and put your fists up if you need to. It’s just that unfamiliarity that keeps people from doing what their heart wants them to do. This conflict between the heart and the head is just so sad to me because again, I'm not saying that all of the people that were down there were bad people. That’s really not my point. My point is that nice people don’t know what to do or they're afraid to do something because our culture has been built up to not make noise, to not take action, to not make a fuss, to not get involved. What can we do about this? This, to me, is the greatest problem there is because bad guys don’t have this problem. Bad guys have decided I will take action. I will do what I want. I will make noise and make a disturbance and make people uncomfortable and get what I want one way or the other so how do we get Team Good Guys to be able to stand up to the bad guys because it doesn’t have to be everybody, mind you. we just need a few more to tip the scales a bit. Imagine that whole scene from the bad guy’s point of view. He’s in a public space. He had a leather glove on, he was smashing out windows, grabbing stuff and putting it into his backpack and moving on. In his mind he must’ve thought I’m not afraid to do this even if there are people around because I already know that most people, what are they going to do? They're not going to do anything. They're not going to chase me. They're not going to tackle me. They're not going to hold me. They're not going to get involved. So, he feels completely free. Bad guys, I mean. They feel completely free to do whatever they want because experience has shown them that most people won’t do anything. Therefore, they win. In this case, out of these 30 or 40 people, it happened that my wife signaled, hey, I'm going to do something which caused me to say okay, then I’ll do something and that little bit of momentum tipped the scales just enough to grab this guy and put him down and then that little action tipped the scales just enough to get Jerron to come over and he helped us out. Not bad. It was enough in that case but terrible percentages here, right? You have 40 people and they all believe that they're good people and I believe in their heart they are good people but only 3 actually follow through on those good intentions. You can see the problem here, right? Wouldn’t it be amazing, what if the story I told you was completely the opposite? What if the story was hey, we were walking through this parking lot and suddenly we heard, hey, stop that guy! And as we turned around, there were already 4 people running towards us and these people all got together, 30 or 40 people, and they made a human wall in front of the exit and we all surrounded the bad guy and corralled him and he never even got touched or hurt but he knew it was over so we put down the backpack and put his hands up and said okay, okay, you got me and then the cops came and took him away. Wouldn’t that be a great story? What if every bad guy had that fear in his heart? Not just about maybe I’ll get caught on camera, maybe somebody in the crowd will have a gun, maybe there’ll be some cop nearby, what if every bad guy knew man, if I do anything, I know this whole crowd’s going to turn against me and it's always going to be me versus Team Good Guys? Can you imagine a world like that where bad guys are that afraid to do something because they knew that all the Good Guys will absolutely stand up to them and take action? That would be pretty impressive, huh? What can we do here? How do we solve this problem? It’s easy to whine but how do you solve this problem? I think it's not so hard. Number one, I have already said, is preparation. If everybody was training in some type of martial art, or using their body, practicing standing up, practicing the feeling of violence, using their body violently, explosively, managing someone else’s body that’s being violent and receiving impact, I'm not talking about getting hurt. I just mean going back to when you were a kid and a little roughhousing or rolling around with your brother, your sister, your friends, was not such a big deal. Sometime you grow up, when you grow up, you kind of lose that comfortability, you lose that sense of touch. Everything becomes hey, back up or don’t touch me and everything becomes paranoid. Everyone’s got their guard up. We all want our space and then if you need to take physical action, that just adds another dimension of weird to the whole situation which just slows you down as the good guy and it keeps you from doing what your heart wants you to do and what society needs you to do. So, one is preparation and to help solve that, coincidentally, I just finished my free, totally free, I don’t want anything from you, self-defense course. It's 10 videos, 11 if you count the introduction, 2 hours of just basic self-defense instruction and if you're listening to this or watching this right now, I beg you. Get the link. Share it with your family, your friends, anyone you consider to be a good guy. It's family friendly. I tried to make it entertaining and universal. I tried to make sure you can practice some of these exercises at home. You don’t need a partner or fancy equipment but I do believe that it's one big step. If all the good guys could just take this, even just that course, of course, I hope they go to a school and train a little more seriously, get a partner, get a club, work this stuff up regularly, that would be even better but if all they have is a link to that self-defense course and that helps in some way, I will die a happy man, I promise you. so, number one, prepare and if that self-defense course is something you feel comfortable sharing, thank you for doing that. Number two, I would say another way that we could help Team Good Guys is to be a good role model yourself. Presumably, you take some type of martial art and that’s how you found this podcast or found this video which means you're probably a little ahead of the game when it comes to your family, your friends in being prepared to do something. I believe any training is better than no training. So, be a good role model. Let people see you standing up for what’s right. Let people see you take action when necessary. Let them see how you don’t let bad guys have their way around you. In most cases, it's probably verbal. It's setting boundaries. It's letting people know what’s not okay with you. every time you do that, you're empowering other people to do the exact same thing. You have to believe that. How do you feel when you see someone stand up for themselves or fight back? You know, when you get that feeling in your heart like yeah! Good! Good for you! go get them! And that makes you feel a little braver about doing the exact same thing. We all learn from each other. This is such an important point. We’re all teachers and we’re all students. When you're in a group of people, you're 30 or 40 people standing around, if you see the scales tipping, the mob mentality can work in your favor. Hey, we’re all going to do something, we’re all going to help and that momentum pulls good things out of good people. If it tips the other way and no one’s doing anything or only one or two people doing something, it's not clear now, wait, who's the good guy here? Who’s the bad guy here? Then good people are just frozen and the bad guys are moving that ball down the field. They're still getting what they want. So, if you are someone who is preparing, you are in martial arts, you are getting bolder and stronger and clearer about your purpose in life, well, let your friends see that. Let your family see that. Be the hero in your circles so that you can inspire everyone else around you to be a hero. I'm not calling myself a hero, by the way. I'm speaking in general. Third thing, just off the top of my head, the other way that you can maybe help is at the very least, share those videos that you find. Share those little memes or posters where you see someone in public doing the right thing. That might seem to talk about lowering the bar but that’s a really simple way to public show you're on Facebook, you're on Instagram and someone’s got a clip of some citizen jumping into the water to save someone in a river. Okay, someone’s making a human chain to pull some puppy out of the river. I'm obsessed with rivers right now because I'm parked next to the L.A. river here. I'm in my car by the way, they keep me in the parking lot, 30:11 but you know what I'm saying when you find these videos and these little clips going around and those should be viral. Team good guy should be sharing that information with everyone. So, if you don’t get the chance very often to be heroic but you see someone else being heroic, let everybody around you know that you think that’s cool. If someone standing up for themselves go over there and say good for you, let every good guy know that there are other good guys right there next to them. I think that kind of peer pressure is very positive. Usually we think of peer pressure as something negative like hey, man, have a cigarette, don’t you want to be cool like me? But peer pressure works the other way too. You can use mob mentality for positive change. Hey, we’re all going to go help this homeless guy. We’re all getting together. We’re going to donate some food and clothing. We’re going to help this guy get a job. Community coming together. Team good guys working for a common cause. Hey, we’re having a blood drive. Hey, we’re collecting food for thanksgiving. You know what I'm talking about. You're probably involved in these types of efforts. Keep that up. Keep championing the good guys. That’s how you can show the bad guys that they're outnumbered. Alright, so I'm kind of coming to the end of this rant. There as one other thought here that I thought was kind of interesting, something I'm going to have to live with a little bit of shame, I mentioned in the other episode, episode 50 that I did feel compelled to take some of the action out of my own fear that my wife would think I was a wimp if I didn’t do something. I mean, hey, what kind of husband am I if I let this punks break into our cars and run off down the street and I don’t punch this guy? I don’t tackle that guy? What kind of man am I? Old school thinking, right? In this case, I thought after this was all over, I was home free, I mean, she just saw me chase down this guy, get my mitts on him, put him on the ground, stay in control and afterwards, I said to her, I was saying, geez, I'm not even sure I was going to chase him but you took off so I wanted to help and she said, oh I wasn’t going to tackle that guy, I just wanted to make noise. I said, oh my god. Well, I was a second point. I said, I had the guy so in the future, I appreciated the help but you really didn’t have to jump in. I don’t want to put you in any danger. I had that under control and she said, she said, hey, the only reason I jumped in is because nobody else was helping and because you weren’t doing any moves. Do you know how long I'm going to have to live with that one? I wasn’t doing any moves. Keep in mind, my wife doesn’t practice martial arts and she doesn’t actually see me do these stuff either. She doesn’t come to my classes. If anything, she’s always saying why do you keep going? Don’t you know enough by now? So, she doesn’t get that. So, in her mind, she was really expecting that I was going to go over there and do some kind of Hongkong fui super karate chop to the throat hey-ya! But that was not what I was doing. What I was doing, I thought, was pretty cool. Afterwards, I'm trying to talk her down, well, hang on, what do you mean, I wasn’t doing any moves? I said, did I get hurt? No. Did you get hurt? No. Did anybody get hurt? No. did I hurt the guy? No. Did he have a mark on him? No. Is there any reason for him to sue us for being overly violent or aggressive? No. is there even any reason for us to be on a police report? No, but he was contained and arrested, right? We did have him under control for 10 to 12 minutes, right? That is the move. Get it? That’s the best move. If you go around wearing a black belt and wearing a jacket that say super cool fighter and you go around punching people in the face when you don’t have to, you might have some complications for that. You might have crossed that line from good guy to bad guy. You might have a little control issue on your soul. Anyway, that’s just a little rant I thought you might find that amusing. I still think the best policy is to do the least amount you have to to make the situation work for you. Alright, so, let me wrap this up. I think I have one final thought here. My final thought. I think the big lesson here is you're on your own. You're born alone. You'll die alone and in between, you're probably going to be fighting alone. Now, don’t get me wrong, if you have friends who will help you, great. If you have family who will help you, great. If a stranger jumps in to help you, great. Just don’t count on it. Make your strategy dependent on yourself first and then whatever help comes your way, say thank you. on that same point, I have another episode of this podcast that you might be interested in, episode number 12. It's called the blonde-haired warrior. In that show, I told the story about one of my neighbors. A young lady who got attacked in her driveway by a would be rapist. She had a roommate that heard the whole incident through the door of their apartment. It happened right outside the door. Afterwards, when we asked, why didn’t you do something? She said, I was too scared to open the door. You're on your own. Get it? But that doesn’t mean we can't challenge ourselves to be a little bit braver. Challenge ourselves to prepare a little bit more to do something when we need to. Remember this: it's not enough to be a good person on the inside. It's what you show on the outside that makes a difference. So, be good and train to do good. That’s how we can all fight for a happy life for ourselves and for each other.Jeremy Lesniak:So that’s a pretty powerful experience and I have to say that I'm fortunate I haven't had anything like that ever happen to me. I mean, this is kind of your second occurrence. You did something back on, it was, episode 50?Ando Mierzwa:I believe so, yes.Jeremy Lesniak:Episode 50 has the distinction of being the episode just before the episode where you interviewed me.Ando Mierzwa:How about that? And you do.Jeremy Lesniak:I couldn’t remember what episode it was and I was going to look it up and then noticed as I dug into these show notes it was right there and I went, oh. This topic and I tied at least it's related to your show. I think my biggest take away is at least from the way you conveyed it, the shock, the surprise that you and your wife felt in that moment, is that fair?Ando Mierzwa:Absolutely, yeah. The actual taking down of the guy and holding him which is kind of your whole lifestyle if you're training as a martial artist, you’d think that would be the number one thing in my head like okay, let’s talk the knee and go back to that experience and how you grabbed somebody but it wasn’t. it was the psychology of human beings observing this event. Martial arts part was the easiest part. It was the why isn’t everyone on board of taking down the bad guy or stepping forward or at least showing support because again, I'm not asking everyone to pull out a weapon and come charging over and beat this guy but even just to come closer, kneel down next to us and show support like yeah, we’re on your side, yes, we got this, hey, this guy isn’t going anywhere, engage in some trash talk or have more people calling the police, anything. Just to have this kind of zombie effect, that’s what is so eerie to me and will haunt me forever. It just because I was just looking up at all these people, I keep scanning the area just in case there was an accomplice or I don’t know what’s going on so I'm looking around and it was just all of these, literally, zombies just standing there, just gaping or just staring, just emotionless and for a time. That’s another part of it was it wasn’t just for…well in that moment, they weren’t doing anything but no, no, they had time to see what was happening, process what was happening, making a decision on what to do or not to do and they still decided to just stand and watch.Jeremy Lesniak:How many of them had their phones out?Ando Mierzwa:Surprisingly, I didn’t see phones because I thought maybe if I go on Instagram and search on a hashtag and maybe somebody would’ve had some footage of it and I could enhance my podcast, my video by showing a little piece of it, a security footage, anything, I just thought maybe there’d be a piece. Maybe I missed it maybe it is out there but I didn’t see people…it wasn’t sensationalized in anyway. No one was saying, oh wow, look at this, because it really wasn’t that exciting. Once he was down, he was down and we were just pinning him so they were literally just standing and not making a big fuss out of it at all. Just this weird, neutral, emotionless dead zone in a quiet parking lot. Everyone just…like a church, just sitting there and it was just kind of eerie.Jeremy Lesniak:Now, I think we can make the comment that people were scared, people…didn’t know what to do, they were overwhelmed. We can say a lot of defensive things but I think what is most telling as an anecdote from what you shred about the psychology was the security guard trying to stop you from what you were doing.Ando Mierzwa:Yeah, that’s right.Jeremy Lesniak:Which, I’ll confess, over the last couple of weeks, I've reflected on this a lot because, as I mentioned to you before we went live, this was kind of a kick in the head to me.Ando Mierzwa:Well, I understand that most security guards are under the order to observe and report. They're not support to be engaging to anybody, they don’t want to open themselves up to lawsuits, they shouldn’t be putting their hands onto anybody so I understand that so perhaps they were torn morally inside their own soul but there were plenty of other people there that did not have that restriction and as a citizen, easily come over and like I said, lent some kind of support even if it was just verbal support like yeah, you got them! Anything. But to be voiceless and motionless is unacceptable.Jeremy Lesniak:I agree. Now, of course, in the moment, in any situation where adrenaline is up, we act in a fairly basic way. I've heard some people say that you're always going to respond at your, not your highest level of training, that’s where you want to be but it's your lowest of all training and we see that in video footage of people getting into fights on the streets. It never looks good. It's always sloppy and slaps. As you look back on this, because I'm sure you’ve reflected back on this quite a bit, would you interacted with the crowd in a different way? Would you have spoken to them differently, asked for help or something?Ando Mierzwa:Well, again, my wife did. She did look up and a couple of times say help us hold him, help us. She did make that effort and I know I've heard the advice and the mercy situation that you should be very specific because of the kind of group dynamic that you should point to one person individually and say, you, pick up your phone and call the police. You, come over here and hold his leg and actually make them feel like an individual instead of allowing them to kind of fade into the background. That would be one tip that I would give. Yes, if you do need an assistance, don’t let out a general cry with the general public. Lock eyes with one specific person so they feel that individual responsibility that they’ve been called out to do something, and again, I believe most people still are good people and I think then when they are led to what to do, they will help. So, that will be one thing I would do differently and again, they were kind of far away. They really were staying back. If they were closer, it would have been easier to go hey, man, you in the red jacket there, get over here and put your hand on that wrist, hold that. That would have been easier but if they were kind of far back so you really have to pick out someone like hey, over there, I think I see you, yeah, you over there. But anyway, I would give that advice. Single people out and tell them exactly what you want them to do. I think that’s going to help a lot better than I think general [43:06] now, one of the things that you talked about was that you were surprised at your wife’s response. What is the conversation between the two of you been since that?Ando Mierzwa:Oh, you don’t want to go there, Jeremy, you don’t want to go there.Jeremy Lesniak:I do, though, because I…I don't know if you're just being sarcastic or not.Ando Mierzwa:Yeah, I'm just kidding. I’m kidding.Jeremy Lesniak:What has that conversation been?Ando Mierzwa:Basically, it was all that night, we haven't talked about it since. I told her I was going to put it on video and she said, are you sure you want to do that? Yes, of course, because again, we’re just different so that’s always fun but the main thing was that I know that she’s a doer. I mean, I married her for a reason. She’s my kind of person. She’s an action taker. She’s ballsy. She gets into situation. She’s been an athlete for most of her life. So, I'm not surprised that she was willing to engage or step up or stand up to something. I'm not surprised by that part. I was just surprised of the timing when she did take off after this guy in that moment because as we’re getting older, like I said, and we’re both kind of banged up a little bit, I was surprised that she immediately started running. I was like, oh, what?! But again, I was confused, she wasn’t planning to tackle him. She was just trying to raise awareness like hey, hey, get that guy so the conversation there once I cleared that up was like okay, I see. So next time you take off, maybe I wouldn’t have the same presumption that you're going to try to tackle him because…but again, I'm not sure because I’ve seen her stand up to other people before so I think the same thing’s going to happen again. If there's trouble, when she hears sirens, she always says, oh let’s see what’s going on. She wants to get up and look at things so that part of the conversation, I think, will always be a little bit of a gray area as a relationship. Just how far you going to go? I don't know, how far are you going to go? I'm not sure. How far would you like to go, right now? I'm not sure. So, I think we will always be kind of sensing each other’s vibe as we go. Are we in on this one or what are we going to do here? Yeah, I don’t know. I'm just babbling about that. I'm not sure. The bigger conversation after that was just like I said, about the technique part. What are the expectation in this situation? Now this is the second time that I have to kind of process my own ego to say, should I be doing anything for the sake of her? Do I need to show my wife that all this time I go to martial arts classes is not for nothing? Do I need to add a fancy looking move or sweep or some kind of choke out just to let her know, hey, I'm cool! The guy you married is not a wimp or I'm not wasting my time with martial arts stuff. Of course, I got over that very quickly. I don’t regret the way it went down was exactly right and the fact that, if she or anyone doesn’t understand that real martial arts is the art of handling a situation with a minimum of effort, not going overboard in anyway, that was the part where I learned about myself like hey, I can do that, yeah. I can just bring it in lowkey. I can get things done without making a show of it without losing my mind or being adrenalized like you said. That could be a whole other show because I think that’s a myth. What is the point of training, I'm going to go off on a rant, I'm sorry.Jeremy Lesniak:Go ahead, by all means, do it!Ando Mierzwa:What is the point of training, if you're still at the mercy of your adrenaline and fear and panic? The whole point of training is that you're not adrenalized when other people are. That you can act smoothly when other people are stumbling. Otherwise, how could you be a fighter pilot? how could you be a sniper? The whole point is they go to training so that they don’t react like normal people so one thing about myself, this is not a brag, it’s just an oh, that’s a nice surprise, as I was running after this guy and I knocked him down, grabbed him and put him down, I was not adrenalized. That’s why I was clear headed enough to not do anything unnecessary. It was actually the most boring part of the story. That was like yeah, yeah, I got him now. I know what the seatbelt leads to. He’s not going anywhere. I've done this before so that part was the easy part. The stress was like where are the cops? Why are they not here yet? This is just embarrassing. I'm lying on the ground. I want to go home. I think my knee is building. My jeans, I like these jeans, sonuva…that was the stuff that was running in my head, it had nothing to do with the actual physical part. That was the easier part so I would hope that anybody listening, presumably you're a martial artist, the more you train, the easier those types of situations should be. Your technique should be there for you if your training got the pressure in it and some resistance in it and you're pushing yourself and challenging yourself. I would hope that that part is the easy part. The difficult part is determining when to engage and I guess just trusting yourself to do the right thing when you need to and that’s the bigger part of this whole experience that most people don’t explore those issues at all. They don’t question when would I do something? when would I not? If I do do something, how far am I willing to go? What am I willing to fight for? what am I not willing to fight for? Those are the big issues because the physical technique part’s actually the easiest, right? Swinging punches, anybody can just start hurting somebody. Hurting people is easy. Trying to figure out when and how far to go, I think those are the harder issues.Jeremy Lesniak:Absolutely. As we look over this story, you did a really good job of articulating the emotion and a lot of the details. I think you may have even said it because you were there on the ground for such a long time you had the ability to take in a lot of what was going on around you and I think the last thing I want to talk about before I let you go today is this idea that…it's a little sad, I think, the reality here that people are less willing to help than we want to think. Now, I say, people, I'm not saying an individual person. You did have someone come over and help you. obviously, your wife helped you and you even articulated some of the psychology there that in a group, people are uncomfortable straying from what the group is doing that to call out a specific person, you do this. You do that. But the sad part for me is that the group doesn’t want to help. So, what has been your response, your thought process from this? Do you look at the world any differently now?Ando Mierzwa:No and…because it’s the same world but I reflect back to 9/11 and I think I did a podcast talking about how after 9/11, we had to take a flight back home for Christmas and that was pretty soon after and of course, everything at airports was on high alert and I remember being on the plane a couple months after 9/11 and you could just, maybe I'm crazy, but I thought you could just feel that everybody on that plane was together. We were a team. We weren’t talking to each other about it specifically but I just felt like if anybody stands up on this plane to cause any kind of trouble, I felt that we were all on the same page. We were all looking at each other, we were all paying attention and I just knew if anybody causes trouble, this is going to be an immediate mob to get up and get that guy down as fast as possible. I just felt that kind of team spirit, if that makes sense, and when we have a huge tragedy or something that’s in everybody’s mind and it becomes a cultural moment, that team spirit, I think, is there and people are more willing to engage and they already know that it's the right thing to do or it's the cool thing to do. Remember after 9/11 people had flags at their windows, driving around in their cars and there was this whole Team USA kind of spirit. I mean, it's unfortunate that we need to have tragedies to remind us all that we’re all on the same team. Good guys, I mean whether it's united states or good people in general. The culture of being good guys should never be out of our minds. We should always remember that we’re not alone and if you're willing to help someone, someone else is willing to help you. There are far more good guys than bad guys out there and that just gets forgotten. We get led off by the headlines and the sad stories and the tragedies that happen in the paper and we feel like these separations and all these red states and blue states and men versus women and everybody’s got their own group and their own flag and we forget the bigger picture. We’re earthlings. We’re all in this together and martial arts is a great way to build up your powers so that when team good guys need you, you're there. You can do your part even if it's just a little part, you can do it. So, the big lesson to me is like I said, I think I recommended if you can let people know that you support them when you see them doing something good, whatever that is, a like on their post, a slap on the back, buy them a cup of coffee, just give them a wink, that means a lot. You know that if you, in any part of your life, if someone comes over and just gives you a kind word or a moment of support that says, yeah, I like what you did there, I saw that. That is really cool. That stays with you because it's not that common. Critics are much noisier. Sometimes I think good guys need to remember that praise and support should be just as loud and just as omnipresent as criticism and negativity and of course, in your part of that mission, you spread positive vibes on a martial arts podcast where it could just as easily devolve into style bashing and criticizing other people’s martial arts styles, your show is incredibly positive that’s why I love this show because you're building bridges, not building walls. I’m on board. I’m on board for that. I hope that anybody listening feels empowered to know that they're not alone if they feel like they're a good person and they feel like a hero in their own circle, social circles, keep doing that. Put on the cape. Stand up a little taller. Smile a little longer. Shake hands, pat backs, let good people know that they are not alone.Jeremy Lesniak:Love it. Thank you and of course, if you are not listening to Fight for a Happy Life, you should be and I’ll let him tell you where you can find that and your social media and all that stuff, sir.Ando Mierzwa:Well, thank you very much sir. Again, it's an honor to be here. I appreciate your mission and yeah, people can find me at senseiando.com, fightforahappylife.com, Happy Life Martial Arts. I hope they come by and like I said, try that free self-defense course, I’m not asking for anything. Not even an email. It's just 2 hours of self-defense basic raining, I think every good guy, human should know in the world so they can drop by and watch one or two of those, watch the whole series, I think that will be helpful.Jeremy Lesniak:Awesome, awesome. I want to thank everyone for their time listening today and yeah, you may have noticed, very little self-promotion today and that’s because I want all the love going over here to my friend, Sensei Ando because this is powerful story and I hope that you will share it with other people because pretty much everybody in the martial arts community needs to hear this so, once again, sir, appreciate your time.Ando Mierzwa:Amen. Love right back at you, sir.