| "What I Once Could Do" Picture the following; you just did 70 pushups on your knuckles, your sedentary friend is sitting and watching, while smoking a cigarette. He then comments "Oh, that's nothing, I used to be able to do 100, before I started smoking, when I was younger." The world is filled with them, people who do no exercise or sport at all but glorify what they once could do. They minimize your current ability by comparing it to the ability they claim they once possessed. Nothing like resting on the laurels of the past, and when I say resting, I mean it literally. How many people have I met over the years, who upon hearing that I am a black belt decide to tell me of their past achievements in the martial arts. Yet, looking at them today, well, let's be kind and say they have not been inside a dojo in long time. It shows. The point is what is it really worth if you are no longer an active practitioner. Traditionally, if you have been away from the dojo long enough for your skills and fitness levels to have eroded, then it is expected that you wear a white belt until your teacher feels you are back at your old level. Simply put, having an old brown belt sitting in the closet, perhaps one that no longer even fits your new dimensions, has little more than nostalgic value. The bottom line: Don't give up, don't quit. One of the greatest thrills for me when I first attended Karate College in Virginia, was to see so many adults who have been practicing martial arts for ten, twenty, thirty or even forty years, still active. These people did not gloat about what they were once able to do, they showed us what they could do today, here and now. How easy it is to tell stories of a glorified past, which no one can really varify or disprove, how much more challenging to maintain your ability over a long period of time. To see Bill Wallace at close to sixty years old still doing full splits and firing off rapid fire kicks high in the sky, to see Professor Arthur Cohen take down powerful young individuals by use of pressure points and leverage, to see Sifu Chi Chung Kwong, a chef at the Chinese restaurant, shatter bricks with his palm, to see Joe Lewis at close to 60 still muscular and powerful, to see "regular" older adults who can still kick and punch and do push ups, is truly inspirational. Let's stop viewing martial arts as nothing more than a fun activity for children. Let us see it as a healthy part of our lives, something with which we can grow old and still stay young. So stop talking about what you once could do and show yourself what you are capable of now. |