LIFE’s PATHWAYS - 36 years
In life, we are all given to certain motivations, whether in the name of survival or in the name of happiness. If we move through life without aim, I believe that is the extent of the quality of your life. It is with a degree of focus that we are able to see the flowers that line the paths we choose to walk.
By the time I started training in martial arts, I had seen Bruce Lee onscreen and a few other Kung fu movies on network television or at the McVickers Theater in downtown Chicago. I had read a few comic books with themes that included martial arts or Asian culture, and had already been enthralled by the notion of being involved in that overall culture. My dream was to be that super hero or that martial arts master, but I did not expect I would find an actual way to do it.
I think that we are all moved to certain directions that call to that part of us that wants to be fully expressed, and always toward the end that is our walk into purposefulness. Whether that purpose is love, comfortable lifestyle or even material gain, it serves us to tread to the degree that we feel compelled to have it. Naturally, the only thing that can stop that journey is our own drive or lack, thereof.
Even if there are a thousand obstacles along the way, the singular wire that we are willing to walk is the one that we choose to try traversing. This is, of course, if we are strong or willful enough to continue onward despite the many crosswinds that might blow us off-balance. The will allows us to climb back up of the goal or the purpose is clear enough.
This is a simplification, of course, of the process. Still, it is nonetheless true and seminal to the eventual success one might take to. The power of self or of love for others or some ideal can often be the proper fuel to get and keep the momentum for the long journey ahead.
It has been thirty-six years plus since I began my martial arts journey, not counting the time that passed while the seed of the idea was germinated inside my imagination. There were the deterrents that would have held me back had I not felt strongly enough about it. There were also the limitations of my feeble physical body, bettered internally with asthma and lack of athletic tendencies.
The promise, despite all of the things that were my prominent hinderances, was worth the steps that I knew I would have to take to reach my mountaintop. The hope of becoming more than I was shown to be by society’s indictment of people like me living in circumstances like the ones I grew up under was worth all the stall that were thrown in my path. The way I pictured my design was more colorful than any drab existence that the “real world” could paint as my lot.
That enabled me to climb my own personal mountain. That allowed me to get to the gates of my own temple and endure the years of under training and misinformation to learn to discern my truth. That powered me to stand and elevate my mission to the point where it would hold me erect until I could reach another level where the temple beyond my own imagined one was.
We all have our temples. We use those imaginings to carry us beyond our current realities. We draw on those past lessons, whether those came about haphazardly or by calculation. It is always that which empowers us.
What are your temples? How did you make it to the place where you could really embark on your journey? Are you there, yet? If so, then good on you. One final question would then be the right question to ask yourself: What is next?
