|
So You Chose the Martial Arts as Your Career
Path: What Were You Thinking?
By Tom Callos
As I write this I’m preparing for the graduation ceremony
for participants in my first Ultimate Black Belt Test (www.ultimateblackbelttest.com).
I’ve been searching for the right words to put the 13 months
each of the candidates has invested in their test into perspective –and
that lead me to writing the following piece, A “Career” Black
Belt’s Graduation Address.
The piece, as it is here, is for an imaginary group of black belts,
a graduating class at a “Black Belt University,” who
have chosen to pursue the martial arts as a career. If the martial
arts are your chosen career, maybe you’ll find some value
in reading it? In my mind, every day is a graduation of sorts, so
the truth is that maybe I wrote this for myself –and for you
too?
A “Career” Black Belt’s Graduation Address
When planning this address, I realized that I don’t have
a single answer to give you, only questions. However, the questions,
mine and your own, are what I think contain the real power in life.
At least that is what I have learned, but continually need to practice
to remember.
Up to this time in your martial arts journey, there have been any
number of people who have cared for your education, nurtured you
along, and cared about how you performed –your teachers, your
seniors, your fellow students, some friends. But beginning next
week, you will, more or less, be on your own (like you have always
been) and back with that one person who got you into this thing
in the first place –your inspiration, your truest critic,
your most faithful supporter, and your some-time-enemy … yourself.
Yes, this is the same person who (might have?) chose the martial
arts over, oh, say a law degree, medicine, architecture, and all
the other noble careers you could have had --had you not been on
the mat so often.
What were you thinking?
You weren’t, were you? At least not in the sense of considering
the ins-and-outs and calculating your choices. Being a martial artist
--or pursuing art of any kind--is a path that doesn’t make
a lot of sense at all when you think about it logically. But the
internal call of the martial arts is compelling and powerful. And
there are lots of other kinds of thinking other than analysis.
Did Baryshnikov think when he danced? Did he analyze and calculate?
Did Michael Jordan think when he ran down the court, stopped, took
three steps back, faked, turned the other way, turned again then
jumped and sent the ball through the hoop that he hadn’t looked
at since mid-court? Is that thinking? One important thinker, Educator
Howard Gardener, calls it intelligence in his book Multiple Intelligences.
He calls it kinetic intelligence. Athletes use it. So do neurosurgeons.
This isn’t a surprise to you, is it?
And he cites other intelligences –musical intelligence, interpersonal
intelligence –and adds them to mathematical and verbal intelligence,
which were, for years, the only ones most educators acknowledged.
Technology isn’t set up to measure all of these intelligences,
but everyone can recognize the truth in the idea. And here’s
the thing: They all come into play when one pursues the lifestyle
of a black belt –and then the path of the professional martial
arts teacher. We may not understand it all, but we use them, just
as we didn’t have to understand grammar when we started talking.
So, through some invisible process, you choose to pursue this path.
Maybe you saw something in a movie or on TV, maybe you met a black
belt who inspired you, perhaps it was simply an idea you found in
your head? But when you put on that uniform and you felt your power
on the mat, you were changed.
It isn’t always easy, this martial arts thing. There’s
pain, there’s push, there’s humiliation and defeat.
But like the oyster that turns a grain of sand into a pearl, you
take all the experiences and find transformation. As a result of
training you are different than you were before. You are expanded
by it all.
I’m not speaking figuratively here. Thanks to brain imaging,
we have started to see something of how we are changed by our experiences.
When the brain encounters something new, something it has never
seen before, its neural pathways shift, and some synapses become
more active while others become less so. Properly wired up and monitored
by a scientist or doctor, the image of your brain lights up like
a pinball machine. When the stimulus is removed the brain reverts
back to its prior state –but not all the way back. It retains
some of the new patterning. You create neurons every time you learn
something new as a record of sorts of how to do the thing. The first
years of your life were completely taken up by this patterning and
stretching as you encountered the bright light of birth, then Mama,
then water, and on and on.
This is all exhilarating, but after 20, 30 or 40 years of it, it
can be a bit too intense for some people. Maybe that’s why
some people tend to get careful and conservative as they get older.
They want things to stay the way they are, so they can get a handle
on life.
But not martial artists; we go looking for the change. The fear
of the unknown, a quick triumph over fear, something new, the crafty
new opponent --then a rush of dopamine to the brain. Of course there
are other things that change us. New arguments change us, new concepts,
new people, and new places. But martial artists make most of their
change from the inside. They use it to grow themselves. It is exalting –and
exaltation is pretty hard to find in the everyday.
So there’s a succinct definition of a good training day for
you: You come home and you’re not the same person as when
you left in the morning. Your daily efforts may not always create
a huge change, but it’s there and it adds up.
Will you ever wonder why you chose the martial arts over everything
else you could have done? Probably. Will you ever “hit the
wall?” I think you will. Will you ever doubt yourself and
your decisions? Most certainly. The famous artist Richard Serra
said, “The place where you are dumfounded by your own lack
of understanding is the place to start working. Once you stop doubting
you might as well stop working.”
Now, graduating to a new level, your real work begins. It’s
not about being a great martial artist, this journey. It’s
about being a great human being. That’s your graduation thought.
My last bit of advice: Stay awake, stay out of your comfort zone.
Keep searching. Keep working. Don’t get stuck for too long.
Practice evolving physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
That is The Way.
You’ve chosen the right career. Make it a great one. Make
the martial arts industry, no, make the world better --because you
were involved.
About the Author
Tom Callos is a veteran consultant to
the martial arts industry. His latest project, The Ultimate Black
Belt Test can be seen at www.ultimateblackbelt.com. His personal
website is www.tomcallos.com. He resides with his wife and three
children in Placerville, CA.
Tom Callos
www.tomcallos.com
www.ultimateblackbelttest.com
|
