Mediocrity Loves Company

One aspect of human nature that I have never found easy to accept or understand is our tendency to resist accountability for our own mediocrity. People have no difficulty whatsoever in finding an excuse to not try or put in the effort to improve their situation and at the same time they will try to drag those around them into their pit of ordinariness to lessen their sense of shame and guilt.

I have had my share of students who were just not willing to do what it takes to bring their training up to a level that was conducive with acceptable progress. While some of them just drift away without a trace, some have attempted to convince others to join them in giving up. Regardless of how they choose to cease their training, I accept full responsibility for their decision. If I had taken more time to reach and inspire them perhaps they would have been able to carry on.

In fact I find myself losing sleep over most of my students who, for one reason or another, have chosen to end their training. When I think of everything kung fu has done for me and my life, I can’t help but wonder if the student I failed to inspire today may end up on a path of mediocrity that could have been avoided if only they would have stayed the course in their training. What if my original instructors had treated me with complete indifference such that I would not have chosen the path I did? I can’t imagine my life without my kung fu and everything it has helped me achieve.

On that note I know I am a very lucky man. I am blessed with twenty student UBBT members who have accepted to take this journey with me. The example some of them are setting, not only for the rest of my school but our entire community, is turning out to be nothing short of legendary. Life becomes effortless when one is surrounded by such positive examples of mastery.

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Action to Attitude

I have been thinking about something I read a couple of months ago that made a strong impression on me. After the death of one of my students, his parents gave me his personal journal to read and I was astounded by everything he had written. He was only twenty years old but the amount of thought he put into things completely defied his youth. Of everything he had written the statement that stands out the most for me was the entry he made after receiving his driver’s license. “My power grows” is how he put it. When I first read this I remember thinking that it was strange way of looking at his accomplishment but the more I pondered it the more profoundly wise the statement became.

What a wonderful way of looking at things. Isn’t it easier to discipline yourself to follow through with those little steps toward a goal if you stay cognizant of the difference they make in your life? All the scales I practiced on the piano were always perceived by me to be a necessary evil rather than a building block upon which I could expand my skill and ability. The hours my first instructor forced me to stand in a horse stance continue to serve me well and have allowed me to broaden my knowledge beyond what I had ever imagined, yet at the time I only saw it as a tool to test my resolve and commitment. How much easier would it have been for me if I would have altered my perspective to see it as an exercise that was actually expanding my power?

Our school’s Adopt-A-Driveway project is an excellent example of how our actions affect our attitudes and at the end of the day our attitudes have the greatest influence on the scope of our accomplishments. It definitely gives your sense of self worth a boost when you see the look of appreciation on the face of those senior citizens while they peer out their windows to watch us clear their sidewalks and driveways of snow.

A simple act can go a long way in making us more cognizant, engaged human beings whose power forever expands.

“Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.” - Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)

I Ate What?

I have been avoiding publicly journalling for the past week as my thoughts have been dominated by the current political situation in Canada. I was never a politically orientated person until I came to the conclusion that it is pretty much impossible to become an activist of value if one does not tackle social issues by holding their government responsible to represent their values.

Over the past couple of weeks Canada has been polarized by an attempt to oust the minority Conservative government by replacing it with a coalition government. With all the political maneuvering and rhetoric flying around, I have learned something: our ignorance can be used to manipulate us.

Stephen Harper used our lack of understanding of our parliamentary democracy to suggest that our system is plebiscitary and then proceeded to whip up a public frenzy by suggesting that if a coalition government was formed, our votes in the past election did not count. The only way my vote does not count is when my member of parliament votes according to his party’s guidelines as opposed to his constituents’ wishes.

What really dismays me is that the biggest argument against the coalition was that the government should be focusing on the current global economic crisis and not these political games. So why was the public not outraged when Stephen Harper proceeded to make our votes not count by proroguing parliament to avoid a non confidence vote? Now unless your MP is a member of cabinet, you have zero representation in government for the next six weeks. Good thing we are not facing an economic crisis.

All this being said, I am not saying I support the coalition. I am just saying that it is time our government start representing the people the way it was meant to. Let them stop relying upon our ignorance and our typical unwillingness to speak up, and start governing the way the system was designed to work.

I personally am disgusted by all the politicians in this country and I am even more disgusted by the general apathy and ignorance displayed by the citizens of this country. It is time we cared enough to take the time to become properly informed. This is one of the major reasons I am so passionate about instilling a sense of activism in those around me. This is the way to global change.

“There is nothing more frightful than an active ignorance.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)

Disaster Capitalism

I’ve been reading Naomi Klein’s ‘The Shock Doctrine’ and I have to say that my inaccurate take on recent world history has been skewed by the popular press and my predisposition to blindly trust the western governments to protect human rights. The book has been a real eye opener on a lot of things for me, the least not being the current state of affairs with the economy and why we find ourselves at the precipice on which we now stand.

Over the past quarter century the west’s support for the freedom fighters in Latin America, South Africa, Poland, and the Eastern Bloc has been solely based upon our greed. Open market capitalism has been forced upon these countries at the cost of democracy and personal freedom. While our rich got richer, their poor got poorer.

I am not sure our current economic woes are even solvable with the way we have structured the workings of our economy. How can a stock market stabilize when corporations are only interested in taking care of their shareholders in the short term as opposed to taking care of their company in the long term? Our whole system not only supports but encourages speculative investors over long term investors. Did we not learn from South Africa’s stock market crisis after apartheid that speculative investing destabilizes an economy?

So once again I find myself encouraged by initiatives like the Ultimate Black Belt Test. With current global crisis’ caused by over-consumption and greed, how much more pertinent can we make the martial arts when we include activism, environmental awareness, sustainable living, and empathy training as our core values. I’m definitely proud to be a member of UBBT Team 6.

“If the firms that employ an increasing majority of the population are driven solely to satisfy the owner's greed at the expense of working conditions, of the stability of the community, and of the health of the environment, chances are that the quality of our lives will be worse than it is now.”
-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (b. 1934)

Simplicity

This week marked the end of an era for me. I found a good home for my 1974 orange Volvo. This car was my most prized possession but I could no longer bear to watch it slowly disintegrate while sitting unused. My sister has always had a passion for that car too so I am hoping she will take care of it and get another ten years out of it.

For me this situation offered an important reinforcement that things are just things. My possessions do not define me, and while they may offer me some comforts, they ultimately do not bring me happiness.

My acceptance of this fact has also allowed me to continue to simplify my life by letting go of other possessions. I sent the first two Apple computers I have ever owned, including my beloved lime flavoured iMac, to the HERO Housing Resource Centre in Alabama. It feels good knowing that there is a use and a need for them and it definitely alleviates a guilt that I never even knew I was feeling over how they were underutilized by me.

While the spiritual side of my development has grown this week through simplifying my life, my physical growth has been struggling as of late. While taking it easy over the past two months in an attempt to eliminate the persistent swelling I still have in my knee from this Spring’s latest surgery, I developed a pain in both of my upper calves. It feels like I have been working them and have the muscle ache that comes with a job well done. However I have not been working out with my legs at all and yet this ache has only worsened over the past eight weeks. The common consensus is that I am suffering from planters fasciitis and my tendons are inflamed all the way up the backs of my legs. Since I have been relatively inactive before and during this development I was at a loss to explain why this would manifest at this point in my training. I was leaning toward my motorcycle riding as the only possible cause when I started to suffer from back spasms and paid a visit to my chiropractor. He took one look at the pronation of my ankles and declared this as an explanation for my inflamed tendons, my past five knee surgeries, and my current back spasms.

So while I have been living the good life where socks and shoes are a rarity, my arches have been slowly collapsing resulting in me developing pronated ankles. This pronation has put constant strain on my knees and lower legs for many years and now I am at the point where a change in lifestyle is in order. From now on shoes should be worn at all times and definitely for all work outs.

Since planters fasciitis has an average recovery time of fifty weeks, it’s a good thing I haven’t done something crazy like enrolling in the UBBT for the next fifty or so weeks. Actually I only see positives coming out of this. I have found the perfect time to complete some of my empathy training and spend a day in a wheel chair. I can also focus on some of the more cerebral parts of my requirements guilt free too. At the end of the fifty weeks I should just about be at my peak for my final performance. Everything is going according to plan, excellent.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
- Leonardo Da Vinci (1452 - 1519)

A New Era

I never placed much hope that change was ever going to happen when the world’s most powerful and influential country still refers to itself as the greatest country on the planet despite having its democracy ranked at 17th in the world and its population’s happiness ranked at 150th in the world. But now the American elections are finally over and the world is different this week. The USA has elected a truly great leader in Barack Obama. We live in a time where big ideas and promises are not enough. With the amount of reform that is going to be required to change the world’s perception of American foreign policies and the American financial sector, only a great leader will be able to return the USA back to an era where they are once again a trusted protector of human rights and a world leader that influences by example as opposed to the imposition of their will.

Barack Obama is a great leader. A leader is what is needed now because for change to happen we all must buy into it and do our part. We can’t expect to sit back and have someone else responsible for it to happen. Barack Obama has strong leadership qualities that make him the man for the job and he has the potential of inspiring the entire world to take a stand on critical issues like poverty and the environment.

I am very excited about the possibilities that are in front of us all. I live in a country headed by a very smart man in Stephen Harper but he does not have the leadership qualities to rally the Canadian people behind anything of consequence. I am definitely looking toward Barack Obama for leadership and inspiration for lasting change.

“A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.”
- Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

I've Always Wondered

Something I have wondered about ever since I was a kid is the whole logic that goes behind the drunk driving laws. While it is accepted fact that someone who has consumed alcohol experiences an impairment in their judgement and their reflexes, our laws have determined that anyone with a blood alcohol ratio of less than 80 mg of alcohol in 100 ml of blood is not legally impaired. So if I am over the limit and am impaired, is it really reasonable for society to expect me to show solid judgement and not get behind the wheel? If on one hand we are saying someone is impaired enough that they can’t drive, shouldn’t we also be saying they are impaired enough that they can’t make a solid, accurate judgement as to what their blood alcohol level is?

Anyway, just something I have been thinking about for a couple of decades. I’m not sure why we are so outraged by drunk drivers while at the same time we justify other stupidity as being due to the influence of alcohol. With this type of logic we are never going to see the end of suffering of those affected by the impaired judgement of a drunk driver.

"If four or five guys tell you that you're drunk, even though you know you haven't had a thing to drink, the least you can do is to lie down a little while."
- Joseph Schenck (1878 -1961)