The Voracious Pursuit of Strength

I am a simple person. Many of my wishes and desires can be routed back to a singular ideal. I want to be stronger. I desire strength, but in reality, what is strength? What does it actually mean to be stronger? Is strength a shallow concept that simply defines the physical amount of push-ups and sit-ups I can do, or is there more to it? As I voraciously pursue strength, I have begun to recognize some of the factors behind what I truly define it as.

Strength is getting out of bed on the mornings you do not want to wake up.

Strength is doing five more push-ups when you think you cannot do any more.

Strength is doing five push-ups on the days where you would rather do anything else.

Strength is allowing your body and mind to rest on the days they need to rest. 

Strength is waving back to your neighbour on the days you wish you could hide away.

Strength is acknowledging your own mistakes and taking responsibility for them.

Strength is understanding your mistakes and learning from them. 

Strength is smiling for those who need to see a smile.

Strength is being patient enough to take the time to understand the hardships of others.

Strength is removing the resentment towards those on their own journey.

Strength is standing back up after falling down.

Strength is accepting that there are days where you will not be able to stand back up on your own.

Strength is accepting that you cannot climb every hill on your own.

Strength is taking three deep breaths and asking yourself “Where am I? What am I doing?”.

Strength is being better today than you were yesterday. 

Strength is having the courage to pursue Mastery.

As I pursue the many factors of strength, what is my goal? I may use the idea of strength as a motivation to pursue me along my many aspirations, but what is the actual goal of the strength I pursue? I don’t believe it can be put to words in a manner that is 100% accurate, but I believe Peter Cullen summarized it the best. 

 “Be strong enough to be gentle”

Mediocrity Amidst

The IHC serves as a path to attaining Mastery not just in our martial arts, but in our day to day lives. We talk about it frequently; taking the habits we build and the lifestyle we create around the IHC and applying it to other aspects of our lives. In fact, I think many of our personal goals end up reflecting this. With that said, I have been very mindful of my pursuit of Mastery in my schoolwork this last year. Or at the very least, working to remove mediocrity. Now, I am struggling.

To start, I do not have a good record as a student. In highschool, I was defined as a “nightmare student”. Smart enough (and lazy enough) to just get by without having to put in any effort. One of my grade 12 teachers actually made a bet with one of my grade 11 teachers that I wouldn’t graduate, fun fact (jokes on him, I had effectively graduated at the age of 16 and before he had even made the bet, but that's beside the point). Long story short, even I recognized this would have to turn around in college.

And overall, I have done well. Made the Dean's List, got some scholarships, yada yada yada. I have been working on purging the mediocrity out of my academic life, and I have been doing well. Which brings me to the present day; I am less than a month away from finishing my bachelors in applied science, and mediocrity is everywhere.

There are two big factors that are working hand-in-hand to contribute to this, I believe. The first is that I am doing well (ironic, huh?). Right now, my current grades are all in the low-mid 90s. Because of this, I have assignments still due in about half of my classes that I could simply not submit and I would still pass with grades above the average. On that same note, I have a few classes where the majority of the grade is still to be determined. My natural instinct is to abandon the classes I have already effectively passed and focus on those which I can still fail and, although I think many of us agree is a logical decision, it is inciting me to drop the ball. 

The second factor is that I am simply done with it. I have been enrolled and partaking in academics since September 2022, which is nearly 15 months of straight school. I have written approximately 85k words since the spring in academic material (for reference, that is the length of the first Harry Potter novel) and I have at least another 30k to go in less than a month. I am sick of it. Some people can do it, sure. But not me. There's always a weight on my shoulders, always something stressing me out. As such, my motivation is completely extinguished. “But Simon, you’re almost there, just keep pushing, one more final sprint!”. I know, I know. The only problem is, I used my final sprint back in September and now I am just flat out exhausted. Good thing I didn’t choose to become a doctor, huh?

Fortunately, my work offers me lots of opportunities to work on my papers. This means I can still attend Kung Fu every night without the guilt that I should be doing more. And to be honest, Kung Fu is currently the only thing keeping me going and refreshed, so I do not believe it wise to cut out my mat time. 

At this time, I do not have a plan to immediately combat this mediocrity. Or rather, my current plan is to not combat it. I recognize this is a defeatist attitude, but I do not believe I have the time, energy, nor motivation to effectively revamp my routine. As such, I am allocating and focusing my energy on simply getting through, rather than spending it trying to find ways to improve that could end up leaving me energy-less and ultimately unable to get by at all. 

I do have a plan to ultimately combat this mediocrity, however. I call it the “regroup and recuperate” method; once I have gotten through this, instead of just rejoicing in the fact that I have gotten through it and never giving it a second thought, I will take the opportunity to reflect and refocus myself. From here, I believe I can most effectively locate the weak spots in how I conducted myself and generate a plan to work around these weak zones in the future. It may not be a direct path to Mastery, but I believe it is the best path I can afford to take.

Lyrics and Faith

A quick fun fact about me to start the blog; of all the video game platforms that exists, Nintendo is the nearest and dearest to my heart. I am a big fan of many Nintendo-affiliated franchises, including the Fire Emblem franchise. Several of the newer Fire Emblem games include proper Main Themes, complete with lyrics and a ballad-like melody which complements the games’ atmosphere remarkably well. These include Heritors of Arcadia (Fire Emblem: Shadows of Valencia), The Edge of Dawn (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), and Lost in Thoughts All Alone (Fire Emblem: Fates).

Each of these three songs are very dear to me and remain consistently on my playlist for many reasons. I am not someone who generally connects to music, and I typically listen to songs without lyrics for this reason. As comical as it may be, the lyrics of these pieces are ones in which I do relate to, and it serves many purposes. A reminder that everything will be okay, a reminder that the world is not my enemy, and a reminder that, no matter how isolated I may feel, I am not alone. As someone who constantly feels “lost in thoughts all alone”, this last point is remarkably important. 

I figured I would use this post as an opportunity to record three of my favourite and most meaningful verses from each of these pieces. They have benefited me greatly over the years and I hope that, by sharing them, at least one person might be able to take away a little something.

Heritors of Arcadia

“Seek what lies beyond this dark age”

“Times warm embrace begins to heal all”

“I am the Earth, I will make you strong”

Edge of Dawn

“As joy surrounds, comfort abounds”

“Don’t ever take back your kind hand”

“Never give in to the call of yesterday” (I plan to get this one tattoo’d, actually)

Lost in Thoughts All Alone

“Embrace the brand new day”

“Life is not just filled with happiness, nor sorrow. Even the thorn in your heart, in time it may become a rose”.

“The rain falls, but can’t wash away the mud.”

There is no such thing as unshakeable willpower. Everyone will have days in which they struggle, days in which everything seems to go sideways. Mastery is not something that can be attained through determination alone; it is important to rely on what brings you solace when you feel backed into a corner. For me, solace just happens to be a couple of songs from a video game series. Kinda corny, isn’t it? 

False Responsibility

 Do you ever encounter a situation where, despite matters being completely out of your control, you feel burdened with a sense of guilt and responsibility over the events that had occurred? Even though you were completely removed or detached, you have the feeling that if you had done something different in your life, everything would have worked out for the better?

For the last ten or so years, I have encountered multiple situations of similar nature in which certain events line up in such a way that leave me feeling remarkably responsible for what had occurred. When I take a step back and observe these events with a level head, I can recognize that it is not physically possible in any shape or form for me to actually be responsible. But despite that, there is a shadow in the back of my heart that cannot see rational reason and as a result, guilt ensues.

The toughest part is that, by nature of these incidents, there is absolutely 100% nothing I can do to prevent them. And as my mental health is part of what makes me feel responsible, it feels like there is nothing I can do to sever the connection I feel between myself and these occurrences. 

So, how do I attain mastery and betterment over something I have absolutely nothing to do with? Frankly, I haven't got a clue. I believe the approach is to reach a point where I can accept that I am not responsible, yet this is something I have been struggling with for a very long time to no avail. For better or for worse, the only plan I can think of is the one I always fall back on; I need to become stronger. I just... haven't figured out how I am going to do that yet. 

What Is My Motivation?

Over the last month or so, I noticed that I have been increasing the amount of physical activity I have been doing. My push-ups have increased, I have increased my forms and cardio, and I have begun implementing horse stance exercises into my day. As I began doing this, my only reason to myself is that it had to be done, which is why I thought nothing of it. However, as I stopped and actually thought about it the other day, it occurred to me. Why am I doing this? The simple answer I came up with is lion dancing.

Being the egoist I am, I had automatically assumed that my lion dance motivation was self sufficient. That I was doing it so that I can be better. So that I can be the best lion dancer I can be. But something about this did not feel right. It was a reason, sure. But it was not thee reason. Somehow, self sufficiency did not feel like the beating heart of my motivation. I think this was a weird realization; I believe I am someone who cares about others and likes to help out wherever I can, yet despite this I always feel selfish about it. I think I always have some type of selfish intent at the core and that it is within my wicked nature as a human. So why does this feel different?

It is because my motivation is not to be the best tail I can be, but to allow my partner to be the best head that they can be. With all of my stubbornness and egoism, I refuse to be the tail that holds back my partner's potential. I recognize this about myself; I need to be stronger, I need more stamina, I need better technique, and I need to be better. 

In the past, I have had approximately three other lion partners. The first two people I partnered with, I did not know them fundamentally well. On the mats, I could work with them and laugh with them and understand them, but outside of the martial artist connection, we did not have much personal connection. My third partner was my brother. While my bond with my brother is arguably the closest I have, we did not have much opportunity to practice or work together. While it is possible that Nate and I could have had potential, we were cut short by covid and then me leaving for school. We had the personal connection but lacked the ability to develop the martial artist connection.

As for my current partner, I believe this is the first time in which I have both of these connections well formed. Without getting too personal about it, my partner is someone I can trust, I can count on, and I wholeheartedly believe in both on and off the mats. As such, I refuse to be the factor which might hold her back. And yet, if I simply elected to allow someone else to take on the role, would that not be the same as giving up? I recognize that in the long run, I may not be the perfect partner and I may need to be replaced. In fact, my anxiety tells me that this is a very likely outcome. But if I do not do everything within my ability to try and reach that level in which I can be relied on, it is the same as choosing to give up. As such, I must become better.

Of course, I recognize this as a fine line. If I push myself too hard, one of two things will happen. I will either lack the energy needed at the end of the day to properly practice my lion dancing or I will injure myself. Either way, it results in me letting my partner down. And as I previously mentioned, I refuse to do that.

Ultimately, my motivation may still be on the selfish side. But at the end of the day, I believe that this motivation is what will push me the farthest, so here’s to riding it. 

Personal Goals

Something that I have experienced a lot in the past is difficulty formulating and achieving my personal goals. In fact, I also have a poor track record for keeping a proper understanding of my goal. This is something I believe we touched on pretty good at the last meeting and several individuals offered good insights towards, and I thought I would form my own thoughts regarding it. 

The biggest thing when making personal goals is something that has been said multiple times; the goal needs to be a goal, but it needs a plan and a foundation. The goal should not be doing 50,000 kicks in a year- the goal should be something along the lines of "to improve my kicks to better my Kung Fu". On that same note, you add the 50,000 requirement to the goal so that you can properly measure it out and have a bar you can strive for.

In the past, I have had difficulty in focusing on the goal itself and not the plan. An example of this was a personal goal I had set several years ago; I was going to do a 36h fast, to better my own personal understanding of those in the world who have to worry about when their next meal would be. This was a busy year for me and at one point, after doing nothing but work and Kung Fu and school for several days, I was going and going and going before nearly passing out. When I managed to re-center myself, I realized that I was really, really hungry. Upon reflection, it occurred to me I had not eaten anything for nearly 40 hours. This is very clearly not a good thing, but at the time? I thought "hey, that's a personal goal checked off".

There are two things I want to note here. The first is that I was treating the goal as a check list; I was just trying to mark it off. The other is that I never completed the goal; I simply completed the numerical value assigned to the goal. This is not good. This defeats the whole point. 

I believe I had largely moved past this and I am quite content with my goals for next year, but in the event that I start to lost sight of it again in the future, this is why this blog exists. 

Monthly Mini Challenge - November

Heyo everyone!

Here is the formal issuing of November’s MMC, along with the randomized partner pairs. Once again, here are the rules;

You and your partner will have 24 hours to do as many punches as you can between the two of you. Keep in mind; you do not need to be together for this. You just need to communicate by text. The goal is to do as many as you can in 24 hours; as such, if you start at 12:00PM on Saturday, you would have until 12:00PM the following Sunday. Work out a timeframe which best works for the two of you.

Whether you and your partner collectively agree to share your numbers with the rest of the team or not, I still want them sent to me as a form of accountability (I believe it goes without saying, but I will not be sharing any numbers shared with me privately).

If there are any further questions, please let me know. Without further ado.. your pairings!

Team One

Sidai Shira Csillag

Sihing Kayley Burke

Team Two

Toudai Michelle Ward

Toudai Jordan Carreau

Team Three

Sihing Kobe Csillag

Toudai Laura Vogt

Team Four

Toudai Aviva Csillag

Toudai Malinda Ferris

Team Five

Toudai Nigel Bauer

Sihing Simon Kohut

Team Six

Toudai Kat Thelwall

Sihing Deb Bjorkquist

Team Seven

Sidai Kody Bjorkquist

Sihing Jackie Kohut

Team Eight

Toudai Mike Kohut

Sihing Don Bjorkquist

Best of luck!!