Constant. Change.
One of the most flawed assumptions people make in everyday life is that things are going to remain the same.
People like to say they want change, but the truth is; we crave constancy because the familiarity of people and things is comforting. Predictability gives us a sense of control and safety. After all, change comes with risk. Uncertainty, inevitably, creates anxiety and stress. Many times, people resist changes -- even positive ones that may make their lives better. As the Chinese saying goes, some people fear losing so much that they'd rather not win!
It only gets worse when great efforts have to be made to bring about some desired changes. The assumption of permanence instantly kicks into higher gear, leading to even stronger inertia. "How do we go from here to there?" The goal seems so far-fetched, making the task at hand feels outrageously enormous. "It will never happen!" The moment you go down the path of thinking this way, the next thought will naturally ensue -- "Why bother?"
Some Aikido students dislike tai sabaki (body movement) exercises during warmups. "It's the same thing over and over. I have done it ten thousand times!" Similarly, some students dislike doing bokken cuts. "It is always the same cut over and over . . ." One hundred cuts before class feels like an eternity.
Someone I know is the embodiment of this kind of thinking. She refuses to go to weapons classes no matter how we lure her. Her reason? "I am not good at it." But if you do not go to class, how do you ever become good at it? She has herself in a perfect catch-22.
The truth is: The tai-sabaki or the bokken cuts should not be the same over and over. With repetition, hopefully, the current one is better than the last one, and the next one will be better than the one you are doing now. They should not be the same at all. What is the same should be the goal: You try to do the best one possible for you. But since you have been training, you continuously evolve into a different person by the second. As a result, what is "the best one possible for you" evolves with you, too. It is a moving target. Theoretically speaking, you should be forever chasing after this goal for as long as you are training.
After ten weeks of quarantine due to COVID-19, understandably, some people become impatient and discouraged. "Will it ever end? Will we get to return to our old lives again?" The desire to return to a familiar lifestyle is natural. At the level of our lives as individuals, it may be hard to have a good appreciation of what the big picture of our population as a whole is like. For most of us, our days have become so indistinguishable that we lose our sense of the day of the week or even the day of the month. There is little cue to help us discern where we are heading, if we are heading anywhere at all.
We have, indeed, had some really rough days, but we have endured a lot and we are still moving forward together. We are not out of the woods yet, but we have made progress. The more impatient we are, the more readily we give up, the more we will be set back, and the further away we will be from the goal we desperately try to reach.
For as long as you are willing to exercise your will power and determination, it would be like doing one hundred bokken cuts: Each cut is going to be better than the last, although you may not notice it at the time. It is only by the time you finish the 100th cut, as you look back, you will realize how much you have gained. I assure you that you will not regret having endured.
People like to say they want change, but the truth is; we crave constancy because the familiarity of people and things is comforting. Predictability gives us a sense of control and safety. After all, change comes with risk. Uncertainty, inevitably, creates anxiety and stress. Many times, people resist changes -- even positive ones that may make their lives better. As the Chinese saying goes, some people fear losing so much that they'd rather not win!
It only gets worse when great efforts have to be made to bring about some desired changes. The assumption of permanence instantly kicks into higher gear, leading to even stronger inertia. "How do we go from here to there?" The goal seems so far-fetched, making the task at hand feels outrageously enormous. "It will never happen!" The moment you go down the path of thinking this way, the next thought will naturally ensue -- "Why bother?"
Some Aikido students dislike tai sabaki (body movement) exercises during warmups. "It's the same thing over and over. I have done it ten thousand times!" Similarly, some students dislike doing bokken cuts. "It is always the same cut over and over . . ." One hundred cuts before class feels like an eternity.
Someone I know is the embodiment of this kind of thinking. She refuses to go to weapons classes no matter how we lure her. Her reason? "I am not good at it." But if you do not go to class, how do you ever become good at it? She has herself in a perfect catch-22.
The truth is: The tai-sabaki or the bokken cuts should not be the same over and over. With repetition, hopefully, the current one is better than the last one, and the next one will be better than the one you are doing now. They should not be the same at all. What is the same should be the goal: You try to do the best one possible for you. But since you have been training, you continuously evolve into a different person by the second. As a result, what is "the best one possible for you" evolves with you, too. It is a moving target. Theoretically speaking, you should be forever chasing after this goal for as long as you are training.
After ten weeks of quarantine due to COVID-19, understandably, some people become impatient and discouraged. "Will it ever end? Will we get to return to our old lives again?" The desire to return to a familiar lifestyle is natural. At the level of our lives as individuals, it may be hard to have a good appreciation of what the big picture of our population as a whole is like. For most of us, our days have become so indistinguishable that we lose our sense of the day of the week or even the day of the month. There is little cue to help us discern where we are heading, if we are heading anywhere at all.
We have, indeed, had some really rough days, but we have endured a lot and we are still moving forward together. We are not out of the woods yet, but we have made progress. The more impatient we are, the more readily we give up, the more we will be set back, and the further away we will be from the goal we desperately try to reach.
For as long as you are willing to exercise your will power and determination, it would be like doing one hundred bokken cuts: Each cut is going to be better than the last, although you may not notice it at the time. It is only by the time you finish the 100th cut, as you look back, you will realize how much you have gained. I assure you that you will not regret having endured.
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