:: worlds in words ::

What is the place of martial arts in our world and in our lives?

With the popularization of martial arts and the recent explosions in the Western world, it really makes me reflect on the various aspects of martial arts. Now, a large portion of the people I know have done all sorts of martial arts from the mundane to the exotic – everything ranging from Karate and Tae Kwon Do to Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai to Systema and Jeet Kune Do. Why is this?

The first and foremost reason that is usually given for martial arts is “self-defense”. The knowledge of martial arts gives one the ability to defend themselves should they come under attack, whether it’s bullying at school or a bar brawl. I’m sure that this could be a legitimate reason for some. The second reason cited, generally, is confidence. Martial arts gives a person the confidence they need to believe in themselves and their scope of abilities, amplifying their achievements in seemingly non-adjacent fields.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

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A transition from just being to truly living – this is that with which I struggle.

Responsibility, accountability, and denying immediate gratification are the top three on my list of problems to be faced, I suppose.  All three go hand-in-hand with one another, and the lack of all three of these things throughout just about my entire life have led me to where I am now, which is a place where I feel that I am devoid of humanity.  By the time that a man gets to a place where he looks at himself and feels – to any degree – that he is not representative of the human ideals, there have been a chain reaction of events that reach far back and make it so difficult to change established patterns of behavior.  For myself, this is particularly poignant as I have been an avid disciple of martial arts and philosophy.  These are all things that I am aware of and should be practising – they are things that I have actively, knowingly denied in myself.  I cannot claim ignorance.

“Give me chastity and continence, but not yet,” he said – and this is how I’ve felt for twenty-one years of my life, in many ways.  As though I have always been prepared to make the transition, like he was to the clergy and eventually to sainthood.  But I always felt as though I had time – I could put this off, I could enjoy my time in youth and carefree recklessness, and move over to the realm of adulthood and holding back personal pleasure at a later time.  To say that I was mistaken would be an understatement; to say that this line of thinking was foolhardy would fail to highlight how much more difficult I’ve made my life by continually refusing to make the right choice, the smart choice, the wise decision.

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When I was in Vancouver, I got into a bit of an argument with some of the troops over beers up in Whistler. I asked them: what gives a man, specifically a soldier, the right to kill in order to achieve it’s mission?

After all, if someone is antagonizing me in my day to day affairs, I don’t have the right to pick up a weapon and harm them, or even kill them. And yet, soldiers worldwide are permitted to kill in the scope of their duties, and I wanted to know what they thought of this.

The argument quickly boiled down into semantics in a matter of minutes. We hashed out what is logical, what is rational, in whose eyes justification is given, and so forth.

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What controls us in our daily lives?

Pause – reflect. What is it, in the everyday, which drives us to do as we do, to think as we think, to act and react how we do, defining and shaping the very moments of our day?

I think that to a large extent, humanity is driven by images and symbolism. What do I mean by this? Imaginary lines drawn in the dirt which symbolize nations. Lines of paint drawn on asphalt roads – and if you cross them, you can be fined. A red light means STOP – and people obey. There is no power in a light source coming through a red-tinted piece of plastic to make you come to a halt at the line. But people do anyway. The symbol of it compels you to. A red stamp over a form with the four-letter word “VOID” can mean so much. Has it changed so much since before the stamp?

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What is the nature of life, and living, and the world at large?

These are, I think, questions that every man, woman, and child probably asks themselves at one time or another.  "Why am I here?  To what end?"  This is a line of inquiry that has existed probably since the sapience of mankind, which the Great Dialogue has attempted to define time and time again.  My introspection in this regard is not really philosophical, or scientific, or even, in the end, practical – I think – but rather a strange mix of hopelessness and distaste.

Life, as it pertains to us, I think is a very simple matter.  It is the period that lasts from our births to our deaths.  For that is how all life begins and all life ends, and the thing held common between all of us.  We are all born of different capacity and capability, longevity, opportunity, and so forth.  What binds us together is death.  If we narrow down the definition of the scope of mankind to those capable of clear rational thought, I think we clarify the desired image more – for those with mental disabilities, altering diseases, heavy drug influence, and so forth, are still human but unfortunately excluded from my target for these purposes.

So what then?  We are all born, exercise rational thought, and die.  It seems so simple, and yet in these three things I find a great amount of wonder.  And in so finding, I find great hopelessness and distaste at the way things are in the world right now, because of the implications thereby following.

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