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During the break in Japanese class last night, we were discussing how you can’t have a sensitive personality if you’re going to learn a foreign language. Even the best student in the class, whose wife is native Japanese, observed, “If you can’t stand looking like an ass 80% of the time, you wont get very far. And that’s if you’re good.” This little theme has cropped up several times in the last few days, and as it turns out it meshes with another piece I’d written – from a journal that doesn’t get published, the private side of my martial arts journals. So, here’s an excerpt from reflections on our last retreat, where we’d done some ropes course work:

“… it turns out I really enjoy ropes activities and climbing, enough so that I’m investigating avenues to learn the technical aspects of climbing. While part of the attraction is appreciation of the technique and physics, there’s also a part of me that relishes the height and potential danger. Internally, it reveals there’s a part of me that needs to walk closer to the edge on occasion, to get to be a ‘white belt’ again and see a whole new world open up. I’m allowed to be the new guy, to make mistakes and have every action and thought be a revelatory experience. Applied to those things which I’m more confident and experienced in, it indicates I’m not being mindful enough: every action and thought while practicing martial arts, photography, working, or anything else, still has the capability to be a learning experience and I need to increase my awareness of this such that every breath is appreciated as something new. To realize I’m always a white belt. To really experience the orange, so to speak.

The ropes course also crystallizes the notion that the things I currently enjoy doing I enjoy not for the fruit of the activity but for the process, the journey. I’m not looking for the ‘best photo’ or ‘perfect dance.’[*] I don’t want to stop, I want to continually improve and evolve. There are some activities I’ve engaged in where I was continually looking toward the destination, and invariably ended up sloppily concluding or even aborting. These are not the things I truly enjoy, and I can distinguish between the feeling of greed and pride in ‘completing’ something, and a purer form of just ‘doing something well.’”

I’m not implying that things should never be finished, but there is some sort of impurity, some desire for fame or notoriety or externally provided accolades that goes along with “finishing.” But just “doing something well” seems to imply some sort of understated humility, that hey, you’ve practiced and practiced and did the best you could – and that may have been phenomenal – but you’re not about to brag about it, and you’ll probably do it again later, and you might do it even better. I find something beautiful in that.

_[*] For those who are a little lost here, in our school what we call dances others would call katas or forms. There a long and interesting explanation as to why, but that’s not for me to get into. Rest assured, our art is extremely martial (and so much more), not just prancing around, but this nomenclature may have thrown you off….