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.

Pizza!

 

I have been amazed so far with all of the blogging, and I am finding it so inspiring. You guys are awesome! The hard part will be to keep up with the blogging - every year we all start off gung ho and blogging is strong, but then as we settle in, it’s gets more difficult to maintain. But the key to a successful year, is to keep blogging. It doesn’t have to be deep and delicious every week, but the simple act serves an important purpose. It keeps us engaged, with our training and each other. It keeps us aware of where we are in our journey, where we feel we are and how we see our progress. Blogging regularly keeps our instructors and fellow students informed so they can offer a hand if we need it. It’s a keystone to a successful year in the I Ho Chuan. Go Oxe

It’s Now

 

As I sit here with our most senior cat asleep on my lap, I can’t help but think about the knowledge that we lose when someone is no longer with us.

For example, my husband’s aunt is the record keeper and historian in the family. She has ties to all of her family near and far, knows so many stories and has oh so many memories. How do we hold on to them after she is gone? I am positive that a lot of that knowledge and history will be just gone.

In speaking to my aunt the other day, she mentioned that she was going through pictures and said that she doesn’t know much about them, but my mom would have. Mom was our historian.

And then there is Kung Fu. It’s over 2 thousand years old, but what knowledge do we really have? How much of Sifu Brinker’s knowledge will eventually be lost? I found myself looking at the nafudakake last week, and again wondering about all of the Sifu’s that no longer train with us. A bunch of them I have never met, and the same with all of the students no longer training.

It occurs to me that time is precious. It’s important to know our past, but it’s more important to know our present. I need to make the most of now, so I don’t miss anything. It can be easy to get lost in the tomorrow’s or the yesterday’s, but really the time is now.

Leading

 

Leading as an example. One of the things that became important to me as my training continued, was for my kids to see me accomplish something amazing. Not for my ego, but so they could see that with hard work anything is possible. It didn’t start that way though. I joined Kung Fu for self defence, and that grew into a way of life for my kids and I.

I was a single mom, working full time and training for my black belt. I leaned heavily on my parents for child care when I was at class, and more so during my grading year. My parents questioned why I was grading for my black belt as they felt I wasn’t spending enough time with my children, but I stressed how important it was to me that my kids saw me succeed so that they could have confidence in themselves.

It took a little bit of time, but my parents did see the benefits to my kids from my training. My dad hasn’t specified what exactly he sees, but he still brings it up from time to time. And that makes me feel good, because I know how he felt especially during my grading year.

Kung Fu is a way of life, and it permeates mine entirely. Our family is kind, compassionate and giving. We care about our environment, and our community. We are sensitive to our impact on those around us as well as our planet. I don’t know that my kids could physically defend themselves anymore as they haven’t trained in 4 1/2 years, but I am pretty confident that they are smart enough to stay away from potentially bad situations. And that’s a win in my books.

Quitting is not an option

 

Lately, I have been finding myself reflecting on my journey as a parent and a student in Kung Fu. I had been training for about a year when I enrolled my oldest in the Lil Leopards class, and then my youngest joined a couple of years after that.

I would love to say that they loved Kung Fu through the years and that I never had any problems with them, but that would be a lie. I don’t recall exactly when they started wanting to quit, or when they started to tell me they didn’t want to go, but I knew quitting wasn’t going to be an option for them.

I remember having to push my youngest through the Kwoon door, making eye contact with an instructor so they knew she was there because if I went in with her, she wasn’t going to participate. I recall days when I had to bring them kicking and screaming to the car when it was time to go, but still going anyway. It was hard. And heartbreaking. And I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to quit bringing them just so I didn’t have to deal with the tantrums and protesting.

But there were more times than not that they did want to go. And as they grew older they started to recognize the benefits. My oldest gained confidence in dealing with other kids, and my youngest gained confidence in making her own decisions. I watched them as they earned their 2nd and 3rd degree brown belts and move to the adult class.

My biggest regret though, and one I wish I could do over was to let them quit. I should’ve made quitting an option after they got their black belts, but I let them quit once they earned their 2nd degree brown. There were a couple of health factors that were in the decision to quit, however in hindsight, getting their black belts with the extra challenges would’ve brought them greater confidence in themselves as young adults.

I can’t change the past, nor the decisions I made for them. I wish I didn’t have to cry and fight with them to get them to class, but I do know now, that even though a black belt wasn’t what they wanted, they are still better now for their training. They haven’t quit things they started - my oldest hated University during the first year, but kept going anyway. My youngest has gained the tenacity to go after what she wants, and not what her friends want. They have grown into amazing young adults and I credit Kung Fu for a lot of it. 
I don’t regret enrolling them in Kung Fu. And I don’t regret the fights we had to get them there, as they were necessary at the time. I cherish the times we had training together, and learning to grapple with them was a lot of fun. The headaches, the stress, the heartache were all worth it in the end. I guess my point is, that even though they didn’t want to go all the time, and it caused fights between us, not quitting Kung Fu has molded them into the compassionate and kind adults they are. And I have come away with understanding of all the parents out there that have to deal with the same issues. Please keep pushing them to come to class, even when it’s easier to give in. The benefits to your kids are a huge reward to the world.