I was talking with a friend on the weekend (we were at a poetry reading, being super cool) and she asked me a very interesting question.
She said that since I'm the intellectual type (considering my foot spends most of the time in my mouth I'm sometimes surprised at this reputation), why do I spend so much time with kung fu, which she saw as a mostly physical activity. She could see me trying to keep fit, but didn't get why I was so passionate about it.
You all know that the martial arts have a hefty mental side to it, in the changes it promotes and the intense discipline/meditative states that are necessary. There's also a real satisfaction in figuring out how to do a technique properly, sort of like finishing a crossword puzzle. But there's another reason.
Like many of us, I started because of old hong kong action movies. Enter the Dragon was the tipping point, but I mostly grew up watching Jackie Chan. I wanted to be able to move like him, simple as that. Of course, you begin at the beginning, but it was so much fun and rewarding I quickly found a thousand other reasons to stay. That desire stayed in the back of mind, only surfacing years later.
I've always been pretty clumsy, I've gotten better but still am constantly tripping over things. So all the fancy techniques never came easy--usually I felt really awkward. When I was a green or blue belt, around 15, I practiced the flying spinning outside inside cyclone kick obsessively. One day I got it, which always happens eventually. For the first time I felt a little like Jackie Chan moved. I was invincible. That feeling has stuck with me today, and still remains one of my fondest memories: the sheer joy of the process.
There's no end product in kung fu besides myself. And that feeling of perfecting a technique for the sake of the technique alone, improving skill because it makes me a better person, is a lesson I try to apply to every part of my life. That's what it's all about.
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