These 3 words are the secret to life, according to Alan Alda

 

“I was in Dundee, Scotland, where they were giving me an honorary degree at the university. They told me that I would have three minutes to speak. Three minutes isn’t very long!

“When I got up to speak, I said, ‘I only have three minutes, so I thought I’d give the secret to life. It’s three words: Adapt, adjust, and revise.’

“That’s the advice I’d give my 50-year-old self, and it’s the advice that I followed myself. It’s the way I adjusted to getting older than 50.

“It’s especially useful when you’re in the second half of your life. The longer we live, the more we have to adjust to the fact that things may start to rust and fall off. Every time we lose a capacity like hearing, smelling, or the sense of touch, we have to adapt to a new way of handling those functions.

“We have to respond to changes that make life difficult. And we have to keep revising the way we think about these things. If you can’t be agile physically, you hope you can be agile from your thinking.

“The challenges that come our way as we get older are just reality, and reality isn’t fixed by wishing it away or hoping it won’t continue. Reality is just what it is. And I find it more fun to cope with reality than to wish it wasn’t.”

Funny Face

 

“When can I hug you again?” I had a student ask me this a few weeks ago, and it broke my heart. What makes it harder is that we are back to learning in the kwoon, but we need to maintain our distance, and therefore still need to send air hugs. But it’s ok, as we adapt to this ever changing situation and make the best of it.

I know I have written about how Kung Fu teaches adaptability, but I have been thinking too about resilience. Change is hard. But if a person has spent any time practicing Kung Fu, they will inadvertently learn resilience. How? By getting back up again after we fall, or taking a hit, or from becoming overwhelmed. By persevering, we become adaptable and resilient. And this builds mental strength. I see this most obviously in the younger students, and their frustration is written on their faces ( or now currently, in their eyes). The more often they get up after they fall, the easier it is for them to shake it off. And that’s awesome.

I’m not a cat

 

I am thinking I have to change gears with this year’s weapon choice. I chose the spear as I have always wanted to (I feel most comfortable with long weapons) but my wrists dictated otherwise. Now my wrists are happy, but there is something unpleasant happening with my left shoulder. I noticed it after the 800 pushups for Master McNeill’s birthday challenge, but the past couple of weeks have been especially challenging. Insert sad face here. But the positive is that it’s still early in the year, so I haven’t lost time. 

I’m going to move to the fan - I did this one a few years back, and wasn’t happy with what I came up with. So here I am, blessed with another opportunity: one door closed, and another has opened. It can be easy to miss an opportunity if we only look at the negatives. Am I disappointed? Absolutely. But it’s not the end of the world, and I can work on the spear next year.