It Feels Different this Time

I am not sure why, but even at this stage of my life I seek out growth, not small things but big ass smack you in the back of the head growth. Tomorrow evening I will be honored in receiving my Second Degree Black Belt at DeSantos Black Belt Spectacular.

It has been a very different journey than my first and it has smacked me in the head many times over during the journey and particularly in the last 9 months. In receiving my first there was a sense of accomplishment, a sense of arrival and a sense of responsibility. This time I do not feel the same things in fact I feel undone. SMACK, good, this is good, really good.

For a while I have been attaching this feeling to many different things trying to name it because as humans we have to give things names to make sense of them, or at least we think we do. At times I have attached it to my lovely tendon in my elbow that reminds me every time I use it that it is unhappy with how I have used it. undone.

I have attached it to age. Really Tom.........undone.

I have attached it to the challenge of having a full life and trying to be everything to everyone and all I do. undone.

I have attached it to not having been able to actually fight Dave the way that KJN outlined for us. We will get there professor. undone.

Physically I am beat up. My elbow will need a few months of rest after tomorrow before knowing if it will heal on its own. My piroformis needs to relax and heal, I need to be less twisted. I am at peace with all of this because I earned all of it. undone.

So at this point what is different? For a while I have been thinking that maybe I am done and that my possibilities in martial arts have reached their peak and I cannot build from where I am. I have come to realise that this is not the case.

I could choose to be distracted by the noise, I could choose to take the easier path and choose to take my belt hold it high and say wow look at what I have done. But there is something in me that fights and rejects that thought.

I am undone, the feeling is exactly what I need to feel. When I look at it I am starting to get excited because it means that I am beginning. I am beginning to learn that gratification and fulfillment do not come in a moment, they are achieved in a lifetime. Each moment along the way is to be celebrated no matter if it is good or bad. Each moment is an opportunity to learn and be better. Each moment is about loving and honoring it.

So, I am undone and it feels different this time and it should. It feels better because it is undone. Undone is possibility, opportunity, challenge and growth. It is exactly what I should be feeling and I am only sad because it took me this long in my life to figure this out.

I am so happy to be a Martial Artist because it is a singular journey that you do together with other  people, it is just like life.

Only time will say if this has changed me for the better but I know I have been changed for good. -praphrased from Wicked.

One Love