Lessons from Martial Arts: Embrace the Process.

Ten Tigers Writing Assignment #8:


“Discuss how martial arts training can be used to make improvements in non martial aspects of our lives. One example would be to take self defense principals and apply it to the food we eat.”

I could write on this one for the rest of my life, and hopefully I will.

I only could make myself attempt kung fu because somehow it called to something long neglected in my spirit. It took a lot of that calling to make me finally get up and do it. Once I began training, I was consumed by doubt, distress, inabilities, and so forth -- but the call kept coming through. As I feared, I soon realized that learning kung fu was the first experience in my life where I could not slide by, I could not pretend to be adequate, I could not act like I understood when I didn't. In all my education (considerable years of it), I was just bright enough to not have to give it my full attention. I found that if I acted like I knew what I was doing, enough people would assume I did indeed know – whether I did or not. Not so in kung fu! So, the first way that martial arts training made improvements in my non-martial life was to make me face myself and my habit of learning at the surface only and, once faced, to develop deeper ways of learning.

I have had to deal with my own learning disabilities, show them in front of others, then figure out how to work through those disabilities anyway. I now know I can only see one thing at a time, so I understand why I have to ask Steven to show me so many times in a row. I can only watch feet, or hands, or the thing in the hands ... and I have to put them together as the pieces I see. Then, and only then, comes the application. Finally, when I see each part of the move, work it into a whole, and then feel the bruise it leaves, I've got it. It's the same for life patterns. At first, and still now, I must have it broken down for me. More and more, I think, I can begin to pick out the parts myself, when I try, from the whole pattern itself. If I practice seeing patterns.

Learning kung fu is the same process of learning anything else well. For instance, literature (poetry, novels, plays) of significance is amazing and beautiful when first experienced – there is a call to the spirit. The call can go unanswered with still much appreciation for the beauty, but to go beyond, to dare understanding, requires much study, much thought, time and effort. And then, once the pieces have been pulled apart, examined for their art, put back together again and experienced as a whole, there comes practice. After I have answered the call and learned, I have to practice. And practice some more. And, it turns out, more even after that.

There is no end. That's the final lesson. I will not arrive, one day, in fine physical shape, able to leap into the air and spin without pulling a muscle, having worked hard, paid attention, and practiced. If I obtain the job I wish for, become the teacher or life-partner I can be – I cannot then stop. Jobs will not stay without effort, abilities will wane, learning will become outdated, and accomplishments will only become stories told of the past, incapable of projecting hopes into the future.

Solid gold. If I don't get beaten, I won't have tried. If I don't keep trying, I will not progress. I will not stop, I will not arrive, I will just embrace the process.