What's the old saying, one step forward, two steps back? Sometimes this year I've felt that way, I'll admit. I think maybe it would be more accurate, however, to say "one step forward, one step to the side, one step at the diagonal, hop three times and flap your arms"!
No, that's not really nonsense. It just means that things which look like setbacks aren't, always, and that we never really regress. What we do instead is take a different path than the one we had planned on taking, and that sometimes it feels like we're getting nowhere only because we can't see the way. In the end, you do get past your stumbling blocks, usually by taking some bizarre detour that you could never have foreseen!
We are currently in the position of changing plans yet again. ISKF Nationals were going to be held in New Orleans this year, starting November 12th. If you've been watching the news at all, you'll realize that there isn't much left of New Orleans to hold a tournament in. The difficult decision was made to cancel them entirely, since there really wasn't time to reschedule such a major event in a different location.
On our end, this meant a major shake-up to our plans, goals, and training patterns. My husband had set some pretty high goals for Nationals, realistic if somewhat on the high end, and requiring huge commitment of time and training. Accordingly, we had geared up our training and were working harder and training more, including going to team trainings. All that of course fell flat along with so much else in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. I don't like competition, so I felt bad mostly for other competitors with much more on the line, like my husband, and I felt bad for the karate friends I had in New Orleans. I also felt bad because we had planned to stay on a few extra days in the French Quarter and take a romantic mini-honeymoon, and we had to cancel that! My husband, on the other hand, took it hard. When you've really motivated yourself for something and it disappears, it's hard to re-adjust yourself.
So, just as we had adapted ourselves mentally to NOT going to team trainings, and had made some plans to occupy that time, it came up that most people were really getting a lot out of those trainings, so they decided to keep doing them. We, of course, had now scheduled things over two of them! But we decided to go anyway. For my husband, it was mostly to show good spirit, since his main goal had been removed.
For me, I have a retest looming for my Sandan test, and need all the training I can get. I still feel sadly unprepared. Part of me would like to put this off as long as possible. On the other hand, adjusting my attitude a month or so ago has really made a difference to my training, and I really do feel like finally, blissfully, I am breaking through. Apparently other people feel the same, and I am being encouraged to go ahead and retest. Ironic, isn't it? I feel less prepared now than I did a year ago.
Through it all, we continue to train, continue to hone our motivation and our focus, continue to discuss what karate is, what it means to us, the place it has in our lives. We get into conversations both philosophical and practical about our martial art, and I realize how lucky I am to be married to someone who shares and understands. When we hit the frustrating times, we encourage each other. When one or the other is unmotivated or tired or burned out or frustrated, the other person will get them moving and get them to class anyway. We have friends who are equally involved, and the longer we all share the endeavor together, the tighter become those bonds. I saw someone who used to train with us, who we haven't seen in about 3 years, and was so delighted to see her and tell her we missed her. She said how much she missed training too, and how hard she was going to try to be able to come back.
So at the end of the day (or at the end of a very long post!) what does this all mean? It means that past the sound and fury, past the arguments, past the personality clashes, karate quietly goes on in the background, much as it has ever done. Karate is a thing apart, it is just karate. All the other stuff, the stuff that stresses us out and makes us frustrated and makes us wonder if it's worth it, that's all things that we put onto karate. Karate bears the burden of our own insecurities and fears, it takes the blame for our own weaknesses. But karate itself is still the pure martial art it ever was, when you cut past all the personal and political.
Once I started training that way again, things started to come together, despite all the chaos that continues to swirl.
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