|
A Young Warrior Faces His Dread |
|
|
|
|
|
|
I'm finding it difficult to sleep tonight.
I still can't believe it. My bag is packed and in just four hours I'll be joining my friends from the Winthrop University Kendo team on a journey to Virginia, where we'll be competing in a Kendo tournament held at the College of William and Mary. I won't be back until late Sunday. My teammates - my friends - and I have spent months training for this event. We've talked about it again and again. We've bonded over our expectations of it. And we've wondered if we would ever be ready for it.
It is human to wonder. It is also human to reminisce.
This isn't going to be the first martial arts tournament that I've ever participated in. Almost fourteen years ago, when I was in elementary school, my parents had enrolled me in a local Shorin-Ryu Karate Dojo, and at one point, my Sensei had sent a good number of us to a tournament in Millbrae, California.
I was very different back then, as a person and as a martial artist - if I could even call myself that. I didn't approach the art with the seriousness it deserved, and I thought nothing of spiritual strength or development of character. The only reason I'd even agreed to take Karate lessons at all was because I thought it seemed like fun to run around posing like a Power Ranger.
Oh, I went through the ranks quickly enough. White belt. Yellow belt. Orange belt. Green belt, then Green belt with two stripes, all they way, ultimately, to a Blue belt - the beginning of the advanced class. But while I learned my Kata and could go through the forms on command, I didn't understand their significance and quickly grew bored of fighting "imaginary" opponents. And yet, as soon as I was put into pads and sent out to spar, I cowered from my partners.
I wasn't ready to compete in a tournament and I knew it. A few of the traits that defined me in elementary school are still a part of me today, and one of these unchanging facets was that I didn't like to try something that I was sure I wouldn't be good at. I didn't want to lose, and I was afraid to fail. I was afraid to even try.
It is human to fear.
Of course, it was too late for me to back out. My parents had already driven me to all the way to that Dojo in Millbrae. So I went out there, but I didn't expect anything good to happen. I fought dismally in the sparring section of the tournament, and I can't even remember *what* I did, much less *how* I did, in the Kata section. I merely remember leaving the tournament with just a few medals that were handed to everybody to commemorate their participation. It wasn't even much of a consolation prize. Sure, my parents still told me that they were proud of me, and they treated me to lunch; but I remember feeilng very confused, and wondering if any of it was worth my while - and why I was even there. I felt like a fool.
Like I said, it is human to fear. But it is also human to face that fear.
Now, more than thirteen years later, I am a practitioner of another martial art - Japanese Kendo - and I face the prospect of fighting in another tournament. I have had the honor of being chosen by my Sensei to join the team representing my university Kendo club, and to be granted the opportunity to fight in the solo and team competitions, as well as test for official rank on Sunday morning. I have not been practicing Kendo very long; my Sensei only began my training in the middle of last September, about seven months ago. I am inexperienced, and I am again unsure of myself.
However, I have also changed. As a grown man, no longer am I pursuing the martial arts for frivolous reasons. I have trained diligently and regularly to the best of my ability, and I have pursued the cultivation of my mind and spirit as well as the conditioning of my body, my reflexes, and my affinity with my weapon. I have loved and grown with my teammates as the months passed by, and I have spent many hours awake in bed trying to grasp what it really means to be an athelete - and a young warrior.
I am passing through another of these sleepless nights. Oh, I won't have to do any fighting until Saturday, but the tournament still weighs on my mind. I've spent ages regretting the way I approached my "study" of Karate, and it is true that part of my motivation for diving back into the martial arts was because I saw Kendo as a way to redeem myself for my past idiocy. Yet as my thoughts return to the upcoming tournament, I find them shifting into strangely familiar territory.
I will be entering this tournament with far less experience in Kendo than I had in Karate when I fought in that tournament so long ago. Then, I already had an intermediate belt rank. Here, I'm a novice without even the lowest rank who has just taken his first baby steps in pursuing the Way of the Sword. There is a good chance I'll be facing someone far more experienced than I am. In fact, I'm counting on it. Realistically, I'd be lucky to even win a single match - and I'm not really holding my hopes up for that either.
Warrior or not, I am only human and I am afraid, again.
But at the same time, I am strangely calm and part of an old Samurai adage comes to my mind: "go into battle expecting to die, and you shall survive." Sure, defeat may be inevitable - maybe even in my first match. But ultimately, I'm not being driven to win the tournament. My real opponent isn't the person I'll be facing in the ring. No, what I am going to confront on Saturday is something far more personal, far more primal. I am going to be facing my fear of failure, the same emotion that pushes me to pull out the stops to succeed in graduate school even if I have to lose sleep. And I am going to confront the childhood behavior that I still consider a disgrace.
I am going to face my old terrors, all those things I still blame myself for. I am going to drag them out into the open and stare them down. I will get my honor back. And even if I don't win a single match on Saturday, I am sure I'll still emerge from the tournament a better person for it. (Besides, I'm also sure I'll still be coming home with an official rank, so it's not like I'm going to be totally empty-handed.)
And you know what? Maybe that's the real point of Kendo, after all.
 Shaolan Lu · Fri Mar 25, 2011 @ 10:21am · 0 Comments |
|
|
|
|
|
