We’ve experienced more snow this year than I can recall since my childhood. With my school’s current Adopt-A-Driveway project into it’s third year of clearing local senior’s sidewalks and driveways of snow, this season’s workload has really stretched our resources thin. It has been a struggle to keep everyone engaged with their snow removal commitments and I know there are times when many lose their resolve and question the efficacy of the entire project. To avoid burnout, we all need reminding that not only do our actions have consequences, but so do our inactions. If only one team member fails to live up to their commitment to the project, there is a ripple effect felt throughout the team that could quite literally determine the future of project.
Before I made my first trip to Greensboro, Alabama, I did a lot of reading on Hale County and the Sam Mockbee Rural Studio Project that had inspired our UBBT build project. Something that one of Mr. Mockbee's students had said really struck a chord with me. He said that before he made his first trip to Greensboro, poverty was just an abstraction for him. I absolutely guarantee that it is also an abstraction for the majority of people. We all think we understand poverty but unless you actually experience it for yourself, you will not truly understand the utter despair that is associated with it. However, through experiential learning, you can remove that abstraction and begin to understand it. This is the power and importance of empathy.
We lead a privileged life here in Stony Plain, Alberta, Canada. Most of us did absolutely nothing extraordinary to earn what we have. The majority of our privileges were literally guaranteed by the geography of our birth. We spend more time thinking about what type of car we wish to own in the future than where our next meal is going to come from. It is very easy to become complacent and forget how precarious our situation actually is. No matter how secure we are, most of us are only two or three timely personal catastrophes away from the possibility of homelessness. It has happened to others, it can happen to us.
Most cultures judge a civilization by how they care for and revere their elders. The world we have inherited was created by those who came before us - most importantly, our seniors. An absolute certainly is that one day we ourselves are going to be seniors who will require assistance. Who is going to step up for us? Back in the day, when you were new in town and had no place to go, no shelter, no food - you stopped in at the local kung fu kwoon and they would hook you up. This is how our kung fu predecessors had defined their rolls in their community but what we at Silent River Kung Fu and other martial arts kwoons do in the here and now will define the role of kung fu for the future.
In kung fu we revere our lineage and our heritage. If we spend too much time resting on our heritage rather than living up to it, we will be in danger of loosing our connection with our lineage and changing the very definition of who we are. As always, who we are and what we stand for is defined as much by our inactions as our actions.
“A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children. Even tyrants and dictators make a point of being fond of children. But the affection and care for the old, the incurable, the helpless are the true gold mines of a culture.” - Abraham J. Heschel (1907-1972)
