Blind Super-Vision

Heyo everyone, this weeks blog is about time and progress, and how we can use the past to help the future.

Time. Its a funny thing that has sparked several conspiracies and arguments throughout its existance, but thats not what I'm here to talk about. Time is what marks our journey, and not just Kung Fu. It can be a milestone, a marker, a due date, every little thing in our life revolves around time. Yet we can only experience so little of it at a time. I'm on the younger end of the stick of the IHC team, and yet I've still lived over 16 full years. In each of those 16 years, 51 weeks. In each of those 51 weeks, 7 days. 24 hours in a day. 60 minutes in an hour. 60 seconds in a minute. That calculates (look at me go, doing math two blogs in a row) to approximately 493,516,800 seconds that I have experienced, existed in, used up. I can look back on all of them, through recordings and photos and memories, and learn from them. Use them to improve. I can see 493,516,800 seconds into the past. But I can't even begin to comprehend 1 second into the future.

Thats just it. Time is blind super-vision. We all walk the same time based journey. We can take a few seconds to turn around and look at this vast road that winds and turns and dips and rises, that crosses oceans and climbs over mountains, that travels through canyons and trails between forests. A vast journey in which we have already walked. And after those few seconds of looking so far back, youre already a few steps farther down the trail. When you look ahead, its fog, right in front of you. No way you can see past it. And with every step you take, it inches back, and so our journey continues. Now, if I gave you the opportunity to walk blindly into a dangerous world where anything can happen, not knowing what lies right in front of you, you may think it seems ridiculous and crazy. But thats what life is. We can't anticipate a car accident that claims the life of a loved one, or tripping over a rock and breaking an ankle, or a surprise visit from a friend you havent seen since highschool, or winning the lottery. What comes out of that fog is uncertain. It can be good or it can be bad. Some of it we're just going to shrug off. Some of it will shape who we are for the rest of our lives.  So we gotta be ready for anything.

We can take this concept, and use it to look at our Kung Fu. When my martial arts journey began about 7/8 years ago, I was in a large class. My physique was small, I was much different. When we look at that, no one put any thought into where we would be in 8 years. We were a class full of small kids, sparking with energy, happy to do Kung Fu, raring to go. And I was the new guy at the back. The person who looked around and thought "wow. Look at all these kids, all with the same interest as me." And us as small children would talk about everyone getting their black belts and being cool and great. That was our expectation. But when I peer back now, I don't recall anybody from that are class still attending the Kwoon. I didn't anticipate being the only person to keep going. But here I am. All the way down the path. Where my fellow kids class companions went, I couldnt tell you. Our paths split long ago. But with that, my path joined with others. And so it will continue. The everlasting path, where it will take us, who knows? As the band AJR states in one of their songs; "Who are we to wonder where we're going?"