- Joined
- Apr 18, 2002
- Messages
- 8,069
- Reaction score
- 25
Has anyone stopped to think about this eternal urinary olympiad? Let's face it, with everyone trying to validate their own thought system by invalidating others is in effect nullifying both. I realize that in the grand scheme of things, I am but a lowly being. But I am a lowly being with ambition. That's right, ambition, for myself, my students, and my organization. Compared to some, I am new to Kenpo, but with over 25 years martial arts experience, I am not exactly a babe in the woods. Kenpo is by the definition of our founder a living, breathing thing. Things that live and grow also change. Look at humans, we are born helpless and in diapers. We grow into child hood and develop skill sets. We grow into our teenage years, where we continue to develop new skills while refining old one while defining ourselves. We grow into young adults with hopefully a good base of skills to draw on. We still learn new ones and refine old ones and sometimes find we have to redefine ourselves. Next, for a large sum, we move on to parenthood, where we are now passing our learned skills to our offspring, and their cycle begins. Thus beginning a circle within our own. As we move onto middle age, we become set in our ways and find change difficult. As we move into our golden years, bodies may start to fail, giving us new challenges and sometimes new skills to be learned. For some that are lucky, they may now be having grand children, a circle within the circle within a circle. Slowly we return to where we started, needing constant care, completing our own circle. SO if life can be described as circles within circles and intersecting circle (our interactions with others) and Kenpo is a living thing, would not the same statements hold true?
White Belt=Infant
Childhood=yellow through green
Teenager=Brown through 1st Black
Young Adult=Second Black
Parenthood= 3rd and 4th Black
etc.....
If you find these statements and logic valid, then would it not also hold true that we each grow differently but at some point complete our circle? We all have different religious and political beliefs, but tend to have a fairly common set of morals, a basic standard of conduct. If we all have a similiar set of basics, then how can one person claim theirs is the one true way and say the others are invalid? What makes each of us different is how we approach these basics and how we apply them. By claiming that one persons basics are wrong when yours is on the same foundation seems fairly ludicrous. As I said to someone earlier, to borrow a 2 thousand year old quote, all roads lead to Rome. At some point, if you stay in the arts long enough, you will ponder the same questions and issues. You may acheive different insights/answers but that does not make one right or superior to another. It makes it different. What is hurting the Kenpo community at large can be summed up in one word, pomposity. Pomposity was a contributing factor to the destruction of the Roman empire and if we are not carefull, it will wind up being the destruction of American Kenpo. We each have different opinions and approaches, but the chest beating superiority needs to stop. We are not gorillas, we are men/women. We are intelligent beings, allegedly. The Kenpo community is fragmented and will remain that way, as America is made up of different states. Each state with different laws and cultures, so too are the Kenpo factions, but we each started out with a commonality that should see us united, not divided. We all have something to offer, some with experience, others with ignorance. Ignorance is forgivable and correctable, stupidity is neither.:soapbox:
White Belt=Infant
Childhood=yellow through green
Teenager=Brown through 1st Black
Young Adult=Second Black
Parenthood= 3rd and 4th Black
etc.....
If you find these statements and logic valid, then would it not also hold true that we each grow differently but at some point complete our circle? We all have different religious and political beliefs, but tend to have a fairly common set of morals, a basic standard of conduct. If we all have a similiar set of basics, then how can one person claim theirs is the one true way and say the others are invalid? What makes each of us different is how we approach these basics and how we apply them. By claiming that one persons basics are wrong when yours is on the same foundation seems fairly ludicrous. As I said to someone earlier, to borrow a 2 thousand year old quote, all roads lead to Rome. At some point, if you stay in the arts long enough, you will ponder the same questions and issues. You may acheive different insights/answers but that does not make one right or superior to another. It makes it different. What is hurting the Kenpo community at large can be summed up in one word, pomposity. Pomposity was a contributing factor to the destruction of the Roman empire and if we are not carefull, it will wind up being the destruction of American Kenpo. We each have different opinions and approaches, but the chest beating superiority needs to stop. We are not gorillas, we are men/women. We are intelligent beings, allegedly. The Kenpo community is fragmented and will remain that way, as America is made up of different states. Each state with different laws and cultures, so too are the Kenpo factions, but we each started out with a commonality that should see us united, not divided. We all have something to offer, some with experience, others with ignorance. Ignorance is forgivable and correctable, stupidity is neither.:soapbox:
