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When I was so very scared as a young boy, Mom said, “Jonny, slow down.” Dad was very angry about something that I did or didn’t do. Maybe I forgot to lock the kitchen door. Maybe we were running late for a family party. It was something. Then again, it might have been nothing at all.
In the bigger picture, Mom reminded me to calm my soul, to slow myself down. Although, being 10 years old, her sublime reminder escaped me. Her enduring unconditional love flew over me. Instead, what Mom said often angered me. I would yell back, “I know!” Yeah, I was young and stupid. Looking back, I should have known better. Mom always had my back
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Me Against Me
kyu (white belt) ranks and
dan (black belt) ranks. Each ascending test progressively gained in gravity. Now older, perhaps wiser, I get that I assigned way more significance to those tests than I should have. In the bigger picture, the late Mizukami Sensei didn’t care about the rank. He wanted to know how much I had evolved since my last test, my last zero. After all, everyone’s zero is different.
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Life has no inherent meaning. Werner Erhard said, “The only meaning in life is the meaning that we give it.” We’re right or make others wrong. We dominate or avoid domination. We win or make up for a failure to be, most likely from childhood. Time is also undefeated. So there’s that, too.
I choose who I’m going to be in any given moment. Getting that, I choose, making a difference is my authentic self-expression. Maybe, I leave the world a little greater than when I came into it. At least, I intend to do so.
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Yudansha (black belts) and the book
The Sword and the Mind by legendary samurai Yagyu Munenori as a Christmas gift. Yagyu Munenori distinguished
ken zen ichi nyo, which literally means
“The sword and zen are one.” In
budo, martial arts,
“The body and mind are one.” I read the book. I got it.
The Sword and the Mind profoundly influenced Mizukami Sensei’s Aikido teaching: