In my first year of Taekwon-Do, I would watch the Black Belts doing their patterns and just be astounded at the vast difference in their knowledge and mine. I struggled to keep the details of my few patterns in my brain, the movements, how to turn, which stance to be in. I felt like they knew everything and I knew nothing and I couldn’t imagine how I was going to bridge that gap. I couldn’t think of how I would possibly be able to acquire the physical knowledge I needed to get to that point.

Now, I am days away from my black belt test, and every time I do every pattern I learn something new. There are micro-corrections to make in every stance, in every hand position. I couldn’t even consider that level of correction when I started because the macro-corrections were so challenging. There’s no point in considering whether your back foot is at 15 degrees or 25 if you are facing the wrong way, or if you have the wrong foot forward. I have the knowledge that I never thought I would be able to acquire, and yet I can see so much more to learn.

You know how when you want something done you should ask a busy person, because they will figure out a way to fit it into their schedule? It seems like it is much the same with reaching the black belt level of knowledge. Now that I have created space for the knowledge to test for my black belt, I have room to take in even more information. And, I have the context to understand more of the information that I’m given. I can see more ways to work on and correct my stances, my kicks, and my punches. I have way more power in my movements than I did even a year ago, but I can see ways to get even more.

A few years ago, I understood and could describe the means to generate more power, and, the ways to improve my training, but now, as I prepare for my test, I can actually put a lot of it into practice. It was if I understood it with my brain before, but it is finally seeping down into my body. My arms, legs, and abs are starting to understand what to do. But that understanding brings the realization of how much more I have to learn, how much better I can get.

Perhaps it might be discouraging for some people to discover that a black belt is not the end point, but for me it is exciting. This isn’t the culmination of my Taekwon-Do practice, this is where it really starts. Everything I’ve done so far has been in preparation for this first step.  This is when I am finally ready to learn to make good use of the knowledge I am acquiring. I feel like I have finally learned my letters, my parts of speech, and my handwriting, and now I am going to be able to start writing a book. That metaphorical book will take a lot of work, and a lot of editing, but the process will be a good sort of a challenge.

In my student manual, it says that a first degree black belt is a fledgling, someone who is really just beginning, and that really resonates with me. When I earn my belt, I won’t be an expert, I will be someone who is officially ready to learn at a new level. More will be expected of me, but I embrace the responsibility.

I’m really looking forward to wearing that black belt and starting my next set of challenges.

Ki-ya!

My friends and I used to play Rock Band a fair bit. At least several times a month and sometimes we’d play several times a weekend. We are all fans of a variety of music, and most of us like to sing, so it was a fun excuse to hang out and listen to music while trying some new things.

I always had big fun, but I often felt a little out of step with everyone else because even though I love music, I don’t *get* it on some level. I rarely recognize music by its opening chords, I can’t tell when to come in, and I can’t for the life of me tell whether I am singing well or singing terribly – but seeing as no ear drums started bleeding, I figured I mostly did okay. One of the features in Rock Band was your ability to increase your points by going into ‘overdrive’ – mode that you could earn by building up energy within the game (by doing well) and then releasing by moving the instruments in a certain way, or by vocalizing into the mic when the screen took on a certain pattern.

For the longest time, I didn’t activate overdrive because I didn’t quite understand how it worked and I didn’t want to ‘waste’ the energy I built up. Of course, I would end up losing that energy because the song would end without me having gone into overdrive. Then my character would be labelled an Energy Hoarder when the scores were tallied.

The idea of me being an Energy Hoarder just popped into my head again as I was practicing my plank for my belt test on Sunday.*

I hate to use up my physical energy. My emotional energy gets taxed all the time, I don’t notice my social energy depleting until it’s gone, but my physical energy? I always hold it back. I’m a physical Energy Hoarder.

I’m not really sure why that is, I don’t know if I have always done it. I know though, that it came to a peak when the kids were small – I always kept a little energy in reserve in case they needed me to drag myself out of bed in the middle of the night, or to carry them somewhere, or to do something one-more-time.

Now though, I should be able to use up most of my energy, to go all in, and not worry about how much time I will need to build it back up. I don’t though. I never go all in. I’m not even sure how.

I know part of it is that I don’t like the feeling. There’s a physical uncertainty in throwing yourself fully into an activity that is – for me, anyway- very unpleasant. I don’t know if that’s an introvert thing – most of us don’t get the same high from exercise that extroverts do, or if it is unique to me. I have to be very, very into my exercise in order to get past that mental barrier – seriously, it’s like I slam into a wall when I try to just go for it. It’s not that I am physically incapable of these things. It’s that I am hoarding my energy, and that’s all mental.

I think that will be my next project after my belt test. I’ll figure out under what circumstances I do thwart the mental barrier, and figure out how to replicate them in other activities. It’s going to be a challenge, but I’ll be a black belt by then – black belts can totally handle that sort of thing.**

* I need to be able to do a 2 minute plank. This morning was the first time I accomplished that, pushing past when I would have normally given up. Then I did it again this afternoon.

**Victoria tells me that with all the habits I want to develop, I must be trying to be a black belt in LIFE. I like that idea. 🙂

       For my 40th birthday, my husband bought me a set of Goddess Guidance Oracle Cards. Now, I’m not a straightforward believer* in tarot or anything like that, and he didn’t buy them for that purpose. He thought I would like the beautiful images on the cards (he was right!)and that the information about the goddesses would be useful for me in my storytelling – as sort of a jumping off point.

I have looked at them from time to time and enjoyed the information presented, but a couple of weeks ago I was looking for a ritual to start my day and decided that I would like to start with some yogic breathing and an intention. Because I can be a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to these things, I decided to take the intention setting a little out of my hands. I decided I would follow the instructions to attune the deck, and then, as per one suggested use, I would shuffle the cards each morning and ask ‘What do I need to know today?’ before selecting a card that seems to jump out at me in some way.

The answers have been interesting so far and I have been using the card of the day as a kind of touchstone. When I have a decision to make or when I feel a bit of confusion, or whatever, I think about the card’s message and use that information in my decision. On my first day of yoga, my card was Hathor – and her message was receptivity – so when I got on the mat, I used that to guide myself through my poses.

Today, I was struggling a bit. Last night at Taekwon-do, I found out that the belt test for the group had been delayed a week. Unfortunately, I have an unbreakable commitment that next week and as a result I won’t be able to test with my class.** This sat heavily with me. I have been testing with this group since we started, and I wanted to be there in the metaphorical trenches as we went through this test together. I wanted to be celebratory when we were done. I wanted to be there for that experience. I feel like I am missing out and that has made the idea of the test a little less exciting and a little more nerve-wracking. I’m grateful for the chance to test at a different time (see **) and I respect why the change had to take place, but it’s a little sad to be outside of that experience.

So, I had a heavy heart this morning as I sat down for my ritual. I took a deep breath and sat in the patch of sunshine on my bed and started shuffling the cards until one seemed ‘right.’

Here’s what I got:

Seems damned appropriate to me.

* I’m not being dismissive here, not at all. I believe there is a lot of energy in the universe that we can’t process yet and that many now ‘woo-woo’ things will become more accessible and better understood as time goes on. I think tarot readings and the like can tap in to some of that energy, but I don’t want to get into whether an individual practitioner is doing something valid or not. Decide for yourself and spend your money carefully.

**It’s okay, my instructors are graciously letting me and The Boy test on the original date with a group testing for a different belt (including The Man and TLG).

So, TLG, my 9 year old, has a loose tooth. It’s been loose for the better part of a month, but because the kid is part shark* his old tooth is jammed up against the new one and it won’t come out yet. It’s causing him a lot of grief because he can’t eat his beloved Golden Delicious apples, and, it aches a fair bit overall.
I feel really bad for him, and I spent a while yesterday convincing him to let me try to pull it out. Now, for adults, enduring short term pain for the long term gain in that context (I’ll be able to eat again? Okay, drag that tooth out.)is a no-brainer. We’d hardly have to think about it. But when you’re nine, those few extra seconds of pain are a huge big deal. He doesn’t have the experience to imagine the time beyond when it hurts, it hardly seems real to him.
I was puzzling over that for a while yesterday, trying to think of ways to explain it to him, to use examples from times in the past where the trade-off was worth it. I was mostly stuck though because if memories of our own pain can be described as blurry at best, then memories of someone else’s are practically obliterated.** Eventually something got through, and he gathered up his courage and let me try.

The damn tooth is seriously wedged in. It caused him a lot of pain for me to pull on the tooth and there as no gain. The plan backfired.

He’s still struggling with his tooth this morning, and I’ve been giving the whole thing a lot of thought.

Sure, most adults would trade the small pain for the large gain in that context, and we’d know to keep trying after the first experiment didn’t work. But how about in other contexts? How many other things do we try, only to stop when things get a bit painful, a bit difficult? How good are we at translating our successes in one area to motivation for another? How much discomfort are we willing to endure to accomplish something we really want?

A lot of the time, I think we give up after that first bit of discomfort, taking it as a sign that we weren’t meant to do the task at hand. I wonder how much we’d gain if we thought of more situations like that loose tooth – requiring a spark of intense discomfort in order to gain improvement?

I figure anything has to be better than the sort of limbo you are in when the metaphorical tooth is giving you grief and you try to live with that low level, constant discomfort rather than taking a risk that might make things a lot better. I think, from now on, I’m going to ask myself ‘Is this something I should live with, or is this a tooth that needs to be yanked out?’

Then I’ll think of TLG, gather up my courage and pull.