“How often do we stand convinced of the truth of our early
memories, forgetting that they are assessments made by a child? We can
replace the narratives that hold us back by inventing wiser stories,
free from childish fears, and, in doing so, disperse long-held
psychological stumbling blocks.”
-- Benjamin Zander, The Art of Possibility
WARNING: This post may be triggering. But the most essential part of my self-identity as a Useful Human Being in this World is authenticity. I do my best at all times to present my experience as objectively as I can, and how the reader may interpret that is nothing I can change, nor is it my place/responsibility to do so. Some may feel I am fishing for sympathy or compliments, some may feel I am not telling the truth. But I will always do my best to write my reflections as they appear to me. Please take what you read with a grain of salt. Forever. Thanks.
Life
is better multi-lingual. I just spent a half-hour studying for my
10-kyu with karateka de Venezuela/R.D. The most important thing they
said was that we are all there to help each other, and that I just need
to ask. It's so easy to ask when I can ask in whatever language I need
to use, to say what I'm trying to say. It also keeps things light,
because I make a lot of mistakes, so there is lots of laughing, and
learning is better with laughter.
I got the email last week to prepare for my 10th kyu test. Since then I haven't been able to think of anything else. I don't know how I haven't cried yet from being constantly overwhelmed.
On top of life itself, here's what I'm thinking at all moments of every day:
-I was mostly dead last summer, and now I am doing this wonderful thing? Does not compute.
-Ehlers-Danlos syndrome is terrifying; I live in constant fear that something horrible and irreparable will happen, whether by a mistake I make or by the nature of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome/Dysautonomia
-Maybe it's not safe to be doing karate.
-Maybe it's not safe to not be doing karate.
-I'm an obvious target to a predator because my splints give me away as low-hanging fruit.
-Enough suffering; if I'm going to spend all my time surviving instead of living, my time on earth is a waste!
-I am furious at EDS. It hurts physically, emotionally, mentally, socially, economically, etc.
-For the first time in years I have a little hope; I don't want to get sick again, to have my hope taken away, and with no one to blame. I'd rather it were because I were trying to LIVE.
-Before karate no one had ever taught me that my body was worth defending physically, and that I had the power to defend it.
-My wife supports me doing karate, and as a result, she gets the benefits of my better health. No one is more deeply deserving of my gratitude, loyalty, and wellness.
-I am starting to believe in myself.
-I am determined to build that elusive "mind-body connection" that everyone is always talking about, and that EDS always rips away from me.
-Growing up we could never have afforded karate for me, let alone adequate medical care.
-How far I have come, to be able to do this for myself!
For the first time in years I have a little hope....
Although I speak Japanese, I cannot hear in class because I cannot always see Sensei's face. That has gotten better and better, so I don't expect that to be a problem as much as it was in the beginning.Japanese is usually easy to hear and understand, but it breaks up a little when spoken in anglicized accents.
As a white-belt, Japanese culture dictates that I stay at the end of the row until I advance. That way, when I really do move up, it will have been because I did whatever work I needed to do in order to advance. But because of my hearing and health, Sensei has decided that I should be near whoever is instructing at all times. This means switching with otagai (each other/other classmates), and I feel like I am cheating the higher belts out of their hard-earned space. But because of my disabilities I have to learn humility by letting people help me. And maybe, for others, it's remembering that we all get to where we are because we have help. Most importantly, Japanese culture also dictates that what Sensei says, the student does; so ends this deliberation, and not a moment too soon! Because I have more or less grown up with Japanese culture I take it far too seriously. I wish to give adequate respect, but being too staunch about the rules gets in the way.
Rafael-san, a karateka who first welcomed me to the dojo, asked me today, "How are you doing with your focus, your mind, body, feelings?" Loaded, question, Rafael-san! I am struggling to focus, because I am always afraid I will get sick. When I feel pain or I feel faint, I wonder if I will die if I don't go to the hospital. I wonder if I am overreacting. I wonder if I will ever get over the feeling that it's not effing fair! I lose track of what I'm doing, and it affects my performance. It's the worst thing in the world, to get in my own way, to see it, and to not know how to solve it. This is how people torture themselves out of success, and it is not useful.
Rafael-san's advice: Remember, we are all the same. It doesn't matter what colour our skin, what language we speak, the health of our bodies, where we're from, what we do, how much money we have. We are here to help each other be the best we can be. We are there to maximize what we can do ourselves, with what we have, not to do as well as--or better than--someone else. (Note: I may not have translated this exactly; the conversation was in Spanish.)
The riches of karate come to me through the people who bless me in their ways: Julie, with her unending support and excitement; Sensei-Tony, with his depth and lightness (go-ju kokoro, hard-soft heart); the dojo where I practice, and all of its people who watch me and root for me as I root for them; the parent-child relationships of my classmates and their ilk which give me hope for the future; the friends with whom I grew up who have made no small deal of celebrating this great life with me; and of course, my EDS friends and doctors who have helped me survive.
My in-laws are a constant source of stability and love, too, which makes me desire ever-more self-improvement. They have taken care of me in sickness and celebrated my best days. No moment is wasted in our family, and work is always being done because love is always being given. The same goes for my "adoptive family" - Mom and Dad G., Diana, Margaret and Bobby. I am never without reason to keep going.
We practice kata (forms) to gain bunkai (analysis; meaning). But we do not practice kata with partners. We practice alone. It is often a conjecture that we are fighting with an invisible enemy. But in kata we are fighting with--and learning from--ourselves.
During kata, it seems I can feel everything. I feel...
-The air pressure and temperature
-My skin burning from sweat and heat
-The soft floor tearing the skin from the bottom of my feet, ripping from the fascia, muscle, bones
-The friction of my gi, warm and loose, catching and pulling my skin apart from where my muscles are moving my bones
-The activation of muscles that are over-taut
-The sliding of joints and vertebrae
-The ache and stab of pain and pressure
-The pulse of my heart that has run out of blood plasma to keep my brain conscious
...and still, above all else, I feel happy. I feel joy...
-To be moving
-To be alive!
-To be present
-To be trying!
-To be safe and monitored
-To be challenged, but protected
-To feel anything at all
-To know that where I come from is miles away, and who I will be is ever-nearer
-To know that no one's expectations of me are less because I am sick
-To know that everyone has pain somewhere, but that my effort reminds them in some bizarre way that the worst pain is giving up.
During kata I struggle with great loneliness. Can you believe that, for as popular and loved as I am, that I feel lonely? How can that be? Well, here is what I am working on within myself during kata, and always: My family of origin is the great question-mark of my life, my great contemplation on "the turbid ebb and flow of human misery" (see "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold). We are from a background that fights, judges, avoids. We so strongly want certain things for one another that rely on an understanding and compassion for each other that we don't have, that it makes us fight at least once per visit, and keeps us from living within several hundred miles of one another by conscious choice. It's hard on all of us to know that we come from hell; we are all trying not to waste another moment of life! Too much time was spent on satisfying a miserable legacy of genuflect and appeasement for the insatiable demands of the culture we come from. It takes so much stress and effort to understand what we all want for ourselves, from of our new lives, that we aren't so good at sharing those lives with one another.
When I pay my karate dues I hear echoes of my mother's voice: "We just can't afford it: I'm still paying for your last hospital bill." How many times I heard that! What guilt I carried as a child, to feel that I kept my family poor. What disgust I lived with in my whole family's judgments that I wanted attention, or to escape from responsibility. What power those words still have over me, and over the stress it puts on my life and marriage to still have sky-high medical bills.
Do not think elsewise than that we are thick as thieves; but we are conditioned to help one another survive. Thriving costs extra. I am just as prone to yelling as anyone else in my family. Yelling used to be used as a weapon. Now, it is what we use for protection. Silence is how we protect one another from hurting each other with our fear and anger. That doesn't make it better, but the distinction must absolutely be made in order for the following passage to have bunkai (meaning).
Every celebration still feels like it could be the same trojan horse that it no longer is. Every struggle is met with the same raging silence that has always kept us apart. We have work to do. Until we are all prepared to do that work with each other, we are learning in our own ways to do that work within ourselves and our own personal lives. I think it's good, and I think it will take time. But because my health is so unpredictable, I always fear that I will not have enough time to do that work. At karate I confront all of this. In publishing this reflection I expect I will also be confronted with the consequences of my misdeed: airing dirty laundry. But it's not dirty if it's acknowledged and cared for. The filth is the silence: although it protects us, it ultimately gets in the way.
When karateka strike choko-zuki (forward punch) we are supposed to yell, "KIAI!" But it reminds me of the yelling my father would do when he hit us, and I can't make a sound. I lose my concentration here, and luckily, I don't have to do geki sai dai ichi (the first kata) in order to achieve 10th kyu. When I try to say Kiai, I choke up. "Yous don't listen until I start swinging!," my father used to say with his backhand raised. "Don't talk--just say, 'O.K. Dad!" he'd chant, with fistfuls of my hair pulled back to keep me off-balance while he gnashed his teeth with a raging expression and spit in my face with the foam in his mouth. It will take many more kyu, and much more spirit, before I am able to transform Kiai into the words, "I'm doing my best!" rather than, "you son-of-a-bitch-and-bastard, rotten, lazy, hard-headed kids!" But I will never give up.
The
kata is where I begin the conversation. I love my family; until we are
strong and well enough to truly be open and honest, accepting and
supportive, I have faith--and evidence--that we are all doing our own
kata, searching our fears and desires for bunkai. No promise exists
that we will find bunkai in practice, but the alternative would be
meaningless, and waste the effort of suffering and survival that we're
all rather tired of doing.
My test on Wednesday, 01/23/2013 (6:30pm EST), will measure whether I have spent my first few months in the dojo learning the moves. But no one is allowed to test until Sensei is convinced unequivocally that we have spirit. Sensei are trained to look--and to see--deeply, in all directions. Without confronting what I do not understand, I deserve no advancement. My dojokun relies on Grace so deeply that it is a part of our name. Grace is what Sensei relies on to test our spirit, and his expectations of spirit are how we grow. We have to be committed to advancing in our confrontations. When we are successful, we grow. When we are not, we learn. But just like I switch positions with my fellow karateka (karate practitioners) to hear better, I rely on that same humility to see better.
A fellow karateka helped me make sure I understand the moves. I feel more prepared now. Yay!
-=-=-
Dover Beach
by Matthew Arnold
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
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