A long time ago, when I first met Master Jang (my Taekwondo master in Seoul) and told him that I had come there to train because I wanted to go to the Olympics, he told me two things.
1) I am proud to teach you.
2) You will know ‘beautiful sadness’.
Being the traditional martial arts master that he is, he said no more than that, and simply left it hanging for me to process in my own way. In my youthful arrogance however, I assumed that I already knew what he meant.
Having had experiences like being forced to drink the water out of a used ashtray, and being locked in a pitch-black hole in the wall where I couldn’t stand up or laydown for several hours on end when I was a kid (long story) I’ve never felt as though I was a stranger to struggle.
At the same time though, having the child-like sense of humor and wonder that I do, as well as a ‘I love-everybody’ attitude, people have always persisted in looking down on me as naïve, ‘ignorant of the world’, easily-hurt and in some cases, just plain stupid. (Given the fact that I finished school with a 3.99 in my last semester and I’m teaching myself 6 different languages at the moment the latter has always amazed me).
When he spoke of the beautiful sadness, this is what I thought he was speaking of; the feeling that most of the people around you may not really know or understand you…(sadness) But that consequently, their lack of understanding also gives you a certain freedom from their criticism. (beautiful). Afterall, if no one around you takes the time to really know, how much can their opinions of you really matter? Not much.
For myself, at the end of the day, being accepted or rejected by most people means about as much to me as whether or not I have the time to take a shower before I go to work. To put it frankly, in other words, 9 times out of 10, I could give a sh-t less. It was this feeling of isolation coupled with social invincibility that I thought he was speaking of.
In the past 10 years of life however, as I’ve grown older, and gained experience in chasing this dream, I’ve come to realize that that is only one type of ‘beautiful sadness’. … And that what he was speaking of was another.
The beautiful sadness he was referring to doesn’t stem from that type of situation at all- it stems from sacrifice. In particular, the sacrifice that it takes to be the best at something.
As a former Korean ROC marine, and a graduate of one of the top taekwondo programs in the world, he knew full well the pain of pushing the human body past the limits of what it was physically meant to do… and the empowerment that comes from proving time and time again that your mind and will are both 100 times stronger than your body ever will be.
He knew full well the loneliness of dedicating so much of your time and energy to training that it was impossible to maintain relationships (or sometimes even friendships)… but also the fact that you develop amazing life-long bonds with those who are patient enough to come to understand.
He knew full well the desolation of failing 1000 times over… but also the insurmountable drive that develops to always pick yourself up one more time that life can ever knock you down.
The beautiful sadness he was speaking of, was the personal loss of self that comes from giving yourself to an ideal, but the strength that comes from realizing that it was always the ideal that mattered most anyway.
Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts
Friday, July 18, 2008
Friday, January 04, 2008
2008: Countdown till 30...
As I have mentioned to you guys before, I started this journey when I was 15. May 14,1994 to be exact. The first day I started taekwondo training. At least that’s the day I think best represents a starting point. Strictly speaking, as I said in the very first blog, I knew I was going to be doing all these things when I was about 11. Although I don’t remember the date (I didn’t write it down or anything), I do remember the day. It was late spring, I was walking home from school, and ‘the path’ simply laid itself out in front of me. It wasn't something I decided to do, and it wasn’t something I was looking for. It was something I simply felt like I was supposed to do.
It didn’t feel like a daydream, it felt like a vision. It was a known. Kind of like when you go to bed at night, and you know that the air you’ll breathe when you wake up will pretty much the same as when you went to bed. Can you prove it? No. But do you question it? Of course not. Because you just know. That kinda thing. Well… maybe that’s a bad example… given how quickly the environmental situation is worsening in China right now, peeps out there might be questioning that as we speak…but you get the idea.
There are other reasons I’ve learned to listen to my intuition too. For one, since I started this process, ideas and answers come to me in dreams a lot, and if I remember them, both are almost always more efficient than what I can come up with when I’m awake. Besides that, as strange as it may sound, I tend to get De jevu far more often when I listen to my intuition than when I don't. As if this particular path has already been laid out for me, and I’m simply retracing my steps.
I remember reading a long time ago, that Crazy Horse used to say that he had a certain ‘medicine’, and that as long as he walked ‘his path’ correctly, he would never be killed in battle, and he never was. (Eventually, he was killed by one of his own people). Perhaps he was speaking of something similar, and perhaps that's why I've never had any particular fear that things weren't going to work out for me either.
Beyond that, even when I’ve failed or made mistakes, the things that I was able to take away from those failures have always been far more useful later on than things that I would have taken away from a win. It's like every battle that I have to fight in life is like a lesson. If I won, I learned something. If I lost, I learned something different, and usually more important. The harder the battle I had to fight, whether won or lost, the stronger it made me, and consequently the greater my potential for success became. It’s like nature’s way of finding balance. And now, after all the struggles that I had to go through to develop my product and my own action acting career, both are almost ready to launch not in one country, but in three- and all at the same time. Amazing.
There were times however (and there still are) where I have my doubts. According to some psychological texts I’ve read, it’s also entirely possible that I simply suffer from “Delusions of Grandeur.” Lord knows that for all the progess I’ve made, I still make some pretty stupid mistakes from time to time. And despite all the amazing things I’ve learned and perceived in my efforts, for the most part, I still haven’t overcome the same inherent faults in my character. (Like the way I put things down when I’m not paying attention and then having no idea where I put them later- damn I hate that). In any event, things like that make me wonder if all the people who looked at me (and still look at me) with doubt are in the right, and me and my intuition are the ones in the wrong…
But either way, I always knew that if I followed my intuition and ‘walked the path’ it seemed to be whispering in my ear, I was bound to find out. And now here we are in 2008. Year 14 of the journey… and the next major crossroads.
At present, I’m at the airport waiting to fly to Chejudo, Korea where I will start my last hard push to win my own success as both an action actor and a business person. While I’m down here, I’ll be able to spend this month working full-time, with all of my expenses paid, while I spend my nights and weekends smoothing out both my action demo reel, and my product line, Phat English. Once the job finishes, I will return to Tokyo, and make my second (or third?) attempt at finding freedom from the burden of both financial struggle and full-time work.
From there I’ll have 8 months left time my 30th birthday- The time at which I either lock myself into this path or walk away from it, move to California to start the Ph.D program I’ve been putting off since I finished my undergrad. I guess in a way, the next 8 months will determine who is more ‘delusional’- me for listening to an intuitive feeling that keeps telling me ‘You can do this’. Or everyone else for doubting in it.
It didn’t feel like a daydream, it felt like a vision. It was a known. Kind of like when you go to bed at night, and you know that the air you’ll breathe when you wake up will pretty much the same as when you went to bed. Can you prove it? No. But do you question it? Of course not. Because you just know. That kinda thing. Well… maybe that’s a bad example… given how quickly the environmental situation is worsening in China right now, peeps out there might be questioning that as we speak…but you get the idea.
There are other reasons I’ve learned to listen to my intuition too. For one, since I started this process, ideas and answers come to me in dreams a lot, and if I remember them, both are almost always more efficient than what I can come up with when I’m awake. Besides that, as strange as it may sound, I tend to get De jevu far more often when I listen to my intuition than when I don't. As if this particular path has already been laid out for me, and I’m simply retracing my steps.
I remember reading a long time ago, that Crazy Horse used to say that he had a certain ‘medicine’, and that as long as he walked ‘his path’ correctly, he would never be killed in battle, and he never was. (Eventually, he was killed by one of his own people). Perhaps he was speaking of something similar, and perhaps that's why I've never had any particular fear that things weren't going to work out for me either.
Beyond that, even when I’ve failed or made mistakes, the things that I was able to take away from those failures have always been far more useful later on than things that I would have taken away from a win. It's like every battle that I have to fight in life is like a lesson. If I won, I learned something. If I lost, I learned something different, and usually more important. The harder the battle I had to fight, whether won or lost, the stronger it made me, and consequently the greater my potential for success became. It’s like nature’s way of finding balance. And now, after all the struggles that I had to go through to develop my product and my own action acting career, both are almost ready to launch not in one country, but in three- and all at the same time. Amazing.
There were times however (and there still are) where I have my doubts. According to some psychological texts I’ve read, it’s also entirely possible that I simply suffer from “Delusions of Grandeur.” Lord knows that for all the progess I’ve made, I still make some pretty stupid mistakes from time to time. And despite all the amazing things I’ve learned and perceived in my efforts, for the most part, I still haven’t overcome the same inherent faults in my character. (Like the way I put things down when I’m not paying attention and then having no idea where I put them later- damn I hate that). In any event, things like that make me wonder if all the people who looked at me (and still look at me) with doubt are in the right, and me and my intuition are the ones in the wrong…
But either way, I always knew that if I followed my intuition and ‘walked the path’ it seemed to be whispering in my ear, I was bound to find out. And now here we are in 2008. Year 14 of the journey… and the next major crossroads.
At present, I’m at the airport waiting to fly to Chejudo, Korea where I will start my last hard push to win my own success as both an action actor and a business person. While I’m down here, I’ll be able to spend this month working full-time, with all of my expenses paid, while I spend my nights and weekends smoothing out both my action demo reel, and my product line, Phat English. Once the job finishes, I will return to Tokyo, and make my second (or third?) attempt at finding freedom from the burden of both financial struggle and full-time work.
From there I’ll have 8 months left time my 30th birthday- The time at which I either lock myself into this path or walk away from it, move to California to start the Ph.D program I’ve been putting off since I finished my undergrad. I guess in a way, the next 8 months will determine who is more ‘delusional’- me for listening to an intuitive feeling that keeps telling me ‘You can do this’. Or everyone else for doubting in it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
