A Life Well Lived

This has been a very difficult week for me. Two weeks into the year of the rat and I am faced with with a tremendous loss. On Monday, February 25, 2008 at thirty minutes past noon, Sophie - Bouvier Extraordinaire, passed away. She died like she lived, furiously and unexpectedly.

If you have read my past blog entries, you will be familiar with Sophie and her ferocious zeal for life. I feel the loss of a friendship that took me far too long to completely appreciate. Just a couple days prior to her death Sophie unearthed a huge bone and brought it home with her from her daily outing. She was quite proud of her discovery as was evidenced by the extra jaunt in her step as she carried it. Of course the bone in her mouth did not preclude her from trying to chase the rabbits that she encountered on her way. The remnants of the bone still sit outside the back door.

The day before Sophie died started like any other day. Sophie stole food, she teased the cats, she exhibited all the traits that made her Sophie. Nothing was amiss until evening, after Sophie finished her final meal. It was time for her walk but Sophie would not get up. She didn’t complain, Sophie rarely complained about anything, she just would not stand up. I finally did get her to stand, she did whimper a little bit at that point, and immediately took her to the emergency veterinary hospital.

Sophie is infamous for eating garbage and other disgusting and inappropriate things. So of course the standard assumption at this point is that something she ate was aggressively disagreeing with her iron constitution. One x-ray later proved otherwise. There was a mass in her abdomen. The ultrasound the next morning confirmed a tumour on her spleen. It was big and inoperable. Sophie was gone shortly after noon.

Despite only living eight years, Sophie’s life was full and adventurous. She enjoyed herself no matter what she was doing, and unbeknownst to me, sometimes while in significant pain. It will probably take me a while to fully deal with my loss. There was no time to prepare and no time to say goodbye. One moment she appeared completely healthy, the next moment she is dead. Her life and subsequent death have given me a lot to contemplate - not just the fragility of life, but the importance of a life well lived.

May our lives be filled with rabbits to chase and discoveries to be made. May we find treasure in our garbage and may we live each day as if it were our last. Goodbye Sophie, I miss you.

"I talk to him when I'm lonesome like,
and I'm sure he understands.
When he looks at me so attentively,
and gently licks my hands;
Then he rubs his nose on my tailored clothes,
but I never say naught thereat,
For the good Lord knows I can buy more clothes,
but never a friend like that!"
- W. Dayton Wedgefarth

Unhealthy Competition

Typically, competition can be a great motivator to help push a person to a higher level. Nothing like feeling the breath of an adversary on the back of your neck to motivate you to dig deeper and drive forward. However one of the biggest challenges I face as an instructor is keeping the competitive nature of my students healthy and positive. So many lose motivation and become discouraged when they compare themselves and believe they are not progressing as rapidly as their peers. Some question their self worth while others become bitter and direct their animosity toward their peers and their instructors. In this state a student is trapped in a cycle of progress paralysis - a self perpetuating attitude that promotes inertia by justifying mediocre results without accepting responsibility.

I use several techniques to maintain a positive attitude and avoid progress paralysis.

Celebrate Personal Victories
I end every day by meditating and reviewing the events of my day. Every day is filled with accomplishments, progress, and opportunities. These gifts can become lost if one does not take the time to reflect upon them - especially when a day has also been filled with stress and challenges. Taking the time to be thankful for your victories keeps things in perspective because sometimes we spend too much time looking at where we want to be rather than looking at how far we have come.

Congratulate Others
I make a habit of congratulating others on their progress and accomplishments. Unhealthy competition is promoted when others’ accomplishments are viewed as a negative reflection of your own accomplishments. Positively acknowledging the accomplishments of your peers reminds you that personal growth is accomplished through personal effort, not by the success or failure of someone else. This technique helps you stay accountable by keeping your own progress personal, independent, and within the realm of your control

Keep a Journal
Documenting your goals and accomplishments creates an accurate perspective that helps maintain focus on what is important for growth. Logging your daily progress establishes healthy competition within oneself and motivates one to push beyond the arbitrary limits we set for ourselves.

Double Your Failure Rate
People who unhealthily compete tend to not venture beyond their comfort zone or their current skill set. Fear of losing or embarrassment motivates people to stick to what they are good at and therefore limit growth and improvement. If one embraces change and accepts failure as a natural temporary result of effort, new tools and skills are acquired and focus returns to the challenge competing with oneself.

Kung fu’s ultimate goal is self improvement. If one keeps that goal in front of them it becomes apparent that competing with another contradicts your ultimate objective. The only person you must surpass is the person you were when you woke up this morning.

Live daringly, boldly, fearlessly. Taste the relish to be found in competition -- in having put forth the best within you.
- Henry J. Kaiser (1882 - 1967)

An Invisible Challenge

According to the Canadian Mental Health Association:

“Mental illness is increasingly recognized as a serious and growing problem. It is estimated that 1 in 5 Canadians, close to six million, will develop a mental illness at some time in their lives. Many more individuals such as family, friends, and colleagues are also affected.”

Think about that. One in five will develop a mental illness and those who do not develop a mental illness themselves will nevertheless be exposed to its ravages at some point in their life.

I often wonder about these statistics. There is such a taboo associated with mental afflictions that I can only imagine the people who are unaccounted for by this statistical model. How many people suffer in silence and shame? How many people are trapped alone in a world of homelessness, shunned by society without access to the help they need?

Mental illness can be caused by a variety of factors. It can be rooted in environmental, physiological, and genetic origins - just like diabetes, cancer, or heart disease. So why is mental illness shrouded by taboo? The problem is empathy, or lack thereof. None of us have a problem recognizing the challenges facing a person in a wheelchair. We all can imagine a world without sight just by closing our eyes. How can we empathize with an invisible ailment? How can we associate with a person who is unable to see and interpret the world the same way as ourselves? This, my friends, is the rub. Their interpretation is their reality, it is not your reality. It takes great patience and compassion to cope with an individual who is suffering from a mental illness.

Look at your world around you. Now imagine if you take all the colours and make them brighter, more vibrant, so vibrant that they are saturated. Take all the sounds around you and multiply them so that they become a cacophony of noise. Now imagine trying to have a conversation with a person with all this visual and audible discordance deluging your senses. If you can accurately imagine this, you are only seeing a fraction of the challenges that could be facing someone suffering from a mental disorder. By no means am I suggesting it is as simple as that. However that image is something that I can imagine, and that image helps me curb my frustrations when I am confronted with the challenge of communicating with someone overwhelmed by their interpretation of their situation.

This weekend was a very emotional experience for me. I promoted three truly inspiring individuals to the rank of black belt. Even though they all worked together as a team throughout the grading process, each one of them overcame many personal obstacles to accomplish this achievement. I could not be more proud. The scope of their achievement is really put into perspective when you consider that one of the three has Asperger Syndrome. I can only imagine the determination required to push one’s self to overcome this challenge and achieve this rank. This individual’s refusal to classify this affliction as a handicap, and her ability to see the positives associated with it is a tribute to human spirit and an inspiration that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

“Mental health problems do not affect three or four out of every five persons but one out of one.”
- Dr. William Menninger (1899 - 1966)

Zen and the Art of Mindful Acceptance

The Year of the Rat has arrived and with it; all the stress and responsibility that is part of practicing a Chinese martial art at this time of year. Celebrations must be attended, lion dances must be performed, and for the grand finale - the culmination of our annual black belt grading that began in October takes place at our annual Chinese New Year banquet this Saturday.

At times like these, I am truly grateful for the gift of kung fu and the Chán mindset it has given me. This mindful acceptance has allowed me to compartmentalize my stress and stay in the now. I have not even been aware of a strategy that has helped me achieve this mindset so I devoted some time and effort in analyzing my methods to see if I could come up with an outline of approach that can be documented.

Stress is generated by our thoughts and our interpretation of events. Our minds are dominated by thoughts regarding the past, the present, or the future.

While it is important to think about and learn from the past, it has already happened so we shouldn’t be agonizing over it. To benefit from our past, we should analyze it, learn from it, and then move on.

The future is something we can influence but cannot control. Over analyzing our goals and predictions can generate stress because there is so much of our future that is completely beyond our control. Planning and setting goals is important but it is also important that we are flexible and adaptable enough so that we can handle all the curve balls that life throws at us.

Focusing on the present allows us to adapt to change and influence our future. The present is the only time that we can actually address and reduce the stress in our lives. The past is gone and cannot be changed. Relying on the future is only procrastinating. The future will be defined by what we do in the present.

After a little self analysis, I realized that I continuously apply three techniques to help me remain in the moment and make the most of the present:

Technique 1 - Strive for Personal Enlightenment and Self Realization.
By analyzing my motives and my emotions, I ensure I am always being honest with myself. The ability to look yourself in the mirror and see yourself completely for what you are is very liberating and provides you with better control of your emotions and insecurities. A person with complete awareness of the hows and whys of the way they feel does not have to spend a lot of time repairing relationships or situations damaged by the mistakes of their past.

Technique 2 - Apply Empathy.
I try to qualify people’s words and actions with their own personal situation. By empathizing with those around me, I find myself much more capable of positively handling any conflict that may arise. Because I am seeing things from their point of view, it is much easier for me to understand and alleviate their concerns. If you are totally focused on the people you are dealing with, it is easier to stay in the moment and keep all your own personal issues and stresses from influencing and perhaps sabotaging the relationship.

Technique 3 - Accept Accountability.
I try to hold myself accountable for everything that happens in my life - both positive and negative. By holding myself accountable I feel empowered to affect change whenever it is needed. I don’t rely upon some unseen event in the future to miraculously solve my problems, I make decisions in the here and now that go a long way to mould my future into something I value.

By holding myself accountable for my past, I eliminate the stress that comes from dwelling about regrets of the past that can dominate my thoughts when my life feels out of control. If I am accountable then I have control to make the changes necessary to avoid repeating the same problems over and over. Without accountability, I am at the mercy of fate.

Those who have been reading my posts from the past will notice that I have also identified enlightenment, empathy, and accountability as my steps to empowerment in making change. Obviously there is more to these three factors than I realized. That’s the great thing about journaling - there is so much locked away in our minds that can make a huge difference in our lives if we were only able to organize and apply what we already unconsciously know.

“The meeting of two eternities, the past and future....is precisely the present moment.”
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)

Smile or Grimace

Funny story. This summer my right knee had been popping for a few months so I figured it was time to get it checked out. There isn’t much cartilage left in that knee so it was getting somewhat disconcerting that whatever I had left may be jamming in the joint. Of course the waiting list for the compulsory MRI was over three months. My MRI was finally complete in December and my results were an incredible negative. How can my knee be popping and swelling if nothing is jammed in the joint? Okay fine. Maybe it’s just the swelling causing the popping. Nothing a few thousand gallons of ice and a few hundred thousand milligrams of ibuprofen won’t fix. Onward and outward.

Fast forward four weeks to the Black Belt class on Friday. I’m teaching the butterfly guard when my left knee, that’s right - the left one, locks from cartilage jamming in the joint. Of course I can’t believe this so I reset and try it again and - WHAMO! It locks again. How do I know it is cartilage? Four surgeries for the same problem over the past twenty years have me pretty much intimately attuned to the betrayals of my knees. After the frustrating wait for my month-old right knee MRI - talk about the irony. I have made an appointment to have the left knee checked on Tuesday and then the waiting begins again for the next inevitable compulsory MRI.

Maybe the story isn’t really that funny. Perhaps it becomes more funny when you consider the muscle mass I have lost since this summer due to another separated shoulder. Can’t do any push ups or upper body strength building exercises with that type of joint swelling. Heck I couldn’t even throw a punch for a while there. Okay that part isn’t funny either but it is downright hilarious if you consider that most of my bi-yearly shoulder separations are caused by shoulder rolls and break falls and we have just replaced our school’s fluffy, forgiving mats with in your face, revenge seeking, don’t even think of messing up that break fall, mats of mass destruction. Nice.

So let’s take inventory here. Two surgeries on my right knee - with joint reconstruction no less, two surgeries on my left knee (a possible third in my future), two fractured wrists from an over-zealous ju jitsu instructor, three fractured knuckles from a cement block, five wonky toes on my left foot from throwing a poor front kick on a heavy bag as a white belt, one fractured foot from an ill-timed break fall, a broken nose from a frozen tennis ball, a non functioning left ankle due to a missed landing on a spear form, a gazillion separated shoulders, and neck, back, and TMJ problems from a car accident. To allow my mom some restful sleep, I have left the injuries from my motorcycle crashes off the list (they were awesome though with a very high coolness factor).

One might be tempted to venture the suggestion that I slow down and perhaps start taking care of myself. I am not a masochist but like any self-respecting marital artist I see the positives in all these injuries. If I am not hurting I know I am not pushing myself. That’s what progress is all about. Pushing yourself beyond what you feel you are capable. Sure I get frustrated with all the injuries, especially when they prevent me from training the way I want. However I do have to admit that every injury, every limitation, has brought opportunity. These opportunities are only possible because I continue to push despite my limitations. Look for opportunities and they will present themselves. Become indifferent and the opportunities will pass you by without you even noticing. Celebrate your injuries as a sign of potential and progress and the negativity that usually accompanies an injury becomes a standard under which to rally your resolve.

With this attitude in mind, last night’s Canadian Ging Wu Chinese New Year Party was the first event of many in which I will be participating to bring in the Year of the Rat. I am determined to make this a year of taken opportunities and one of personal growth - both physically and spiritually. On another note, this will be the fifth New Year that will be celebrated without Grandmaster Stan Lee. He was a great leader and tremendous human being. Despite barely knowing him, I truly miss him.

“We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.”
- Charles R. Swindoll (b 1934)

Defining Moments

I have always tried to surround myself with positive people and influences, and this is the atmosphere I strive to maintain for my students at Silent River Kung Fu. I cannot control everything that goes on in the change rooms or outside of class so the battle to keep students focused on the positive impact of their training is constant and relentless. Negativity is systematically contagious and if left unchecked, spreads like cancer.

Running a kung fu school of 270 students is as much about dealing with politics of personality as it is teaching the art. Push a student too hard and they may not be able to see the struggle to the next level as being feasible. Don’t push a student hard enough and the lack of challenge can create indifference in their training. Spend extra time helping this student in crisis and risk alienating that student who only sees favoritism.

Managing the diverse personalities in a school can be overwhelming and sometimes frustrating. I have to admit that at times I question why I do what I do. It would be so much easier just to train for myself and leave it at that. This is why I always keep my life’s defining moments in front of me. My life has been blessed with many - my first perfect throw, the day I met Master Macdonald, a life altering phone call, using my chi to heal for the first time. In times of crisis there have been many more defining moments that have helped me put things in a perspective such that I can draw strength to push on and remind myself that I am making a difference.

Earlier this year an incident took place that has become a defining moment. This incident has changed my life, and perhaps through my influence, will change the lives of many more.

I had just spent two stressful hours on the telephone with a friend who has been struggling with life for a while. This day was an especially trying day for him and I had done my best to help him with his perspective. My friend’s personality is such that he continually questions his self worth and what his purpose is in this life. I have to admit that on this day he had almost convinced me of his perspective and I found myself questioning many things, especially the big ‘Why?’. After ending our conversation as positively as possible, I headed off to teach my first class of the day.

I love riding my motorcycle and the peaceful solitude it provides. Ironically, this day it afforded me ample opportunity to spend my solitude reflecting upon my friend’s situation . This only served to deepen my despondent mood. This was when I noticed a little boy in the back seat of the car adjacent to me. The boy was intently watching me, obviously fascinated with the motorcycle. I looked over and made eye contact with him. That is when I realized he had Down’s Syndrome. As he continued to stare, I waved to him. The most beautiful and perfect smile appeared upon his face. It was as if I had been touched by an angel and a wave of emotion washed over me. Despite the stressful ordeal of my day, I felt totally rejuvenated.

Here was a boy given a lot in life wrought with disadvantages I will never experience. Yet this handicapped boy, with no extraordinary effort on his part, had shaken my world. He showed me that something simple and personal can have a ripple effect that transforms reality. I realized that this young boy’s influence had changed my perspective and eliminated all the doubt and pessimism that had invaded my psyche throughout the day. If I took this positive energy and passed it on to my friend, it could literally change his life.

So yes, thanks to this defining moment, I will always see how and where I make a difference. All of this brought about by the smile of a small, handicapped boy. I can only imagine the awesome potential each and everyone of us possess.

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world."
- Anne Frank (1929 - 1945)

EDuh

So Ed Stelmach has once again indicated that we are on our own if we want our species to survive. Our premier has not shown any leadership toward initiating any legislation addressing overall carbon emissions and continues to ignore all the empirical evidence that shows our planet is heating up. Mr. Stelmach’s strategy of emission intensity reduction while allowing production to increase is the equivalent of a smoker switching to a ‘light’ cigarette but increasing the amount they smoke from one pack to two packs a day. Duh.

Now Alberta finds itself in a situation where our oil is being labeled as environmentally toxic and it may even be banned for sale in the United States. Our premier’s proposed technology solution? Let’s pump all those toxic emissions underground! Is there no end to our ability to damage and disrupt nature’s balance?

Moving the problem from the atmosphere to the soil, which by the way is responsible for producing the atmosphere, is irresponsible. Carbon sequestering will have a major impact on the life of the soil and therefore the life of the planet. Even if we ignore such an obvious point, how does Ed figure the carbon dioxide will not escape back into the atmosphere? Counting on technology to solve a cultural problem is a recipe for extinction.

I suggest we all adopt a carbon neutral approach. Rather than explain it myself, check out this link to the David Suzuki Foundation’s take on the subject: http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Climate_Change/What_You_Can_Do/carbon_neutral.asp

Why I think this is the best solution at this time is because it takes into account my theory of the three steps to empowerment, and therefore change - Enlightenment, Empathy, and Accountability. The big one of course is accountability. Make each of us accountable for neutralizing our own personal carbon emissions and we will solve this problem as a culture.

The time has come to reevaluate what is important to us. If we take a moment to educate ourselves, our values will shift our focus from the economy to the environment. No worries, our culture is so engrossed in making money that our economy will adjust to support our new values and introduce environmentally sound products and practices while continuing to generate a decent income for all. However if we don’t all act now, and I do mean now, everything will be lost.

"Storing carbon in trees or soil reservoirs for several decades may help delay climate change, but if releases from these reservoirs are not matched by deeper emission reductions, climate change could be faster and more damaging in the future."
- David Suzuki Foundation