If life was a knife... Part 2
So continuing into the importance of Martial Arts and how it's not just an activity. We can take lessons learned and apply them to recent events.
The results of the recent election have our country in a state of unrest so I have to look back to my training in order to regain my balance. The particular lesson is how Martial Arts promotes community. Most Martial Arts were developed by the people in order to defend their villages from bandits, raiders or in some cases the established government. When you were excepted into a Martial Arts school, you were excepted into the family. As a family you trained, worked and lived together. Your actions outside of the school were a direct reflection on the school and in turn the family. You were held to a higher standard if you wore the insignia of your school because your school's reputation was more important than your personal ego and pride. Some students even took the school's name as their surname to show respect and to honor the master.
As martial artists we spend our time training to be prepare for some event that hopefully never happens. Periodically we gather, we bring our hard work, our techniques, our heart and we FIGHT! Through the fighting we get to know our strengths and weaknesses, where we are solid and where are our holes. We punch, kick, block and dodge and when our endurance runs out, our heart takes over. We push each other to the limit and then we keep pushing. Some make it through, some do not. After the victor is determined, it's nothing but respect. We bow, bump gloves, shake hands or hug.
When we gather we promote each others philosophy on fighting, we exchange different view points on weapons and training techniques. Sometimes those views align sometimes they don't. But our intent on gathering and fighting isn't to find out who's best but to learn what we can do to be a stronger community of MA's. Some people will not agree with this philosophy but if you look back in the history of each martial art, most were developed by an oppressed people to defend themselves. They were developed strengthen and unify the community.
I want to apply the lesson of community I learned from training to the world at large. The results of this election have torn friends and family apart. I myself am having trouble with some of my friends because of their view points but I have to remember that at the end of the day we are all Americans, it's our right to have differences. We all live different lives and experience things differently. I remember my out of state friend lost his job when gas prices went down. I'm sitting here enjoying these low gas prices and he had to uproot his family to another state to find work. Of course he's going to have a different opinion on how he wants to vote. He's not going to vote against his interest, he has a family to take care of also. And in that, I can relate. We both want the same thing, we want to provide for our families the best way we know how. And having a certain leader in office can make that easy or a whole lot harder.
Just remember that you were friends before hand and you had something in common that made you gravitate to each other and form a bond of friendship. If you're really friends then you should be able to meet and share your experiences and try to find a common ground. Sometimes it's to agree to disagree, sometimes it's to walk away. Just be empathetic and listen to understand, don't listen to respond.
Martial Artists are the only group of people that I know of where fighting is used to make us understand, it's used to make us stronger. It's teaches that it's okay to be different in our philosophies and techniques yet we are still the same. We all just want to be stronger and if we're stronger as individuals then we'll be unstoppable when we band together.
Martial Arts teaches many lessons, maybe some more embedded than others but there is value in training. Thank you following this series. Share if you found value, you can drop me a line using the "about me" link on the page. Shout out to Esteller Mixed Martial Arts!! All the pics were from when we trained there. Thank you for all the lessons. (Click on the pic to learn more about Kajukenbo) We miss you guys! See you in Part 3.