I agree with you. Once you establish a pattern of waiting for things to fall into place before you do thus-and-so, you never do much of anything. While
'Be Prepared!' might well be a good motto for the Boy Scouts, not much of anything ever goes according to plan anyway.
Can't train in the art you thought you preferred? Train in the one you can. Can't pay for it? Ask if you can trade training for coming in early and washing mats and windows (hint: I know a sensei who does that regularly). Too far to go? Find a person with whom you can share a ride or learn the bus routes. In other words,
do what you have to do. You tend to value that which has a personal cost to you. You tend not to value that which is merely handed to you. If it hurts to get it, you'll cherish it.
I have, from time to time, posted stories here of martial arts students who have overcome many challenges. Age, mental and physical handicaps, prior criminal backgrounds, health issues of all sorts. From blind judoka (there actually seem to be a lot of them about) to karateka with one arm or no legs, these people overcome. Your pockets are empty? Get real.
There's a young man who comes by the dojo where I train from time to time. A nice young man, pleasant enough. He wants to take up martial arts training so that he can lose weight. He wants to lose weight so that he can join the military. He has many plans for his future. He tells us these plans every few months when he drops by. He's never taken a lesson, he'll never join the military. His life will be lived by
'woulda, coulda, shoulda' in my opinion.
I have a relative whom I love dearly, but his life is that of a victim. He would be successful, he'll tell you, if only people would give him a chance. He could really shine, if only others could see his potential. He doesn't want charity, he just wants opportunity. But, he waits passively to have it offered to him, to be recognized and given that shot he so desperately wants. Asking him what he thinks others owe him is useless; suggesting that he stop waiting to be given a chance and go out and make his own falls on deaf ears. That's not right; it's not fair. He should not have to tell others how good he is, they should be able to see it themselves. It's not his fault, it's theirs. Of course it is.
I have failed at many things in my life and succeeded at relatively few. I have started things and quit doing them, for a variety of reasons. I have kept at some things and not others. But I regret none of them. I only regret those things I never even tried. I've never succeeded at anything I didn't try, though.
You can make more money. You can find more love. You can start over again and again in life. You can go broke and still get rich. What you cannot have is your life over. Once time has fled, you are screwed. Live your life as you would like it to be. You may fail, but you'll never succeed if you do not try.
[SIZE=+1]TO THE VIRGINS, TO MAKE MUCH OF TIME.[/SIZE]
by Robert Herrick
G[SIZE=-1]ATHER[/SIZE] ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying :
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer ;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may go marry :
For having lost but once your prime
You may for ever tarry.
Generic advice to those who can't:
You're not a winner if you win. You're a winner if you try. If you don't try, you're a loser, and I have no time for your pathetic mewlings. Get off your half-moons and live your life, or take your sad story down the road.
At the end of your life, you won't regret those things you tried and failed. You won't regret those prizes you reached for and missed. You will regret those opportunities you failed to seize, those options you failed to take, those doors you refused to walk through.
Have a "V" for 'Victim' tattooed on your forehead, it reads the same in the mirror so you can remind yourself every morning that this is how the world sees you, because you saw yourself that way first.
My opinion only, of course. A former whiner, complainer, and pathetic loser who somehow managed to discover he had a set and started acting like it.
I'm 49 years old tomorrow. I started MA training at 47. I'll never master my art, but I will give it everything I have. I will never regret starting; only not having started sooner. A famous Jewish saying goes
"Too soon old, too late smart!" But don't be like me, start now. Do whatever you have to do, start now.
God pity them both! and pity us all, Who vainly the dreams of youth recall; For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
-- excerpt Maud Muller, by John Greenleaf Whittier
Time
(Mason, Waters, Wright, Gilmour)
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.
So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.
Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I'd something more to say.
even offered him a bicycle, and was turned down...
