mushinnoshin

I guess my little holiday bender is officially over now. Well it was fun while it lasted.

Lest you think otherwise, there actually was a greater purpose. 2007 turned out to be a mildly shitty year for me. Mildly in that nothing much happened, the problem was just that, well, nothing much happened.

I spent most of 2005 and 2006 working very hard on my self improvement trip, standing on a tripod of karate, yoga, and meditation. By 2007 I was becoming tired and frustrated, feeling like I’m doing all this work and getting nowhere.

But I *had* been making progress, on many fronts. It’s just the sort of gradual process that’s hard to appreciate one day to the next, especially when the ultimate goal still seems so far away. Hell, understanding exactly what the goal is still seems far away.

Anyway as the year waned on I found myself slipping more and more. Skipping meditation with the Tibetans. Wanting to skip karate & yoga classes — and watching the clock even when I made it to class. Skipping or half-assing my morning practices, and going to bed later so as to wake later so as to have an excuse. Backslid on my ongoing attempts to reduce & eventually give up meat consumption. I only read one book the whole year, and that’s only because I read most of it on the plane to and from California — and I still owe Lesley a book report :)

So by the time Thanksgiving rolled around, and with the added incentive of struggling with a knee injury, I figured maybe the best way to keep from going over a cliff was to take the car into a ditch. No karate, no yoga, no meditation — no concerns, no limits, no discipline. Sensei often tells us, as a metaphor to illustrate that we can only make progress in small steps, that we have to “fill the cup, empty the cup, fill the cup, empty the cup” … my thinking is that sometimes you even have to wash the cup, dry it, apply a new coat of silicone sealant, and let it cure for a few weeks. Or maybe even just smash it and buy a new one.

So now I feel like hell and look like hell and I’ve got a couple of pounds holiday beer cheer to work off, but at least I can again appreciate *not* feeling like this.

And I woke up bright and early, and did my full morning practice.