Thanksgiving - Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving is much more than time spent with the family or eating a big Turkey dinner. It is a time when we should remember to give thanks.

Many years I held a turkey trot, or rather a early morning work out on Thanksgiving, having fun with Chin Na techniques not part of our normal study. It was a time when my adult students lived closer to our dojo. But times change, and our arts focus changes too.

Over my years I've been touched by maybe a thousand students, hard as that number is to realize for I only see them as faces one by one. You share their time with you, and much harder you share their decision to move on to something else, a very important and necessary decision in thier lives. I remember to give thanks for that time.

You share death, something you were never taught. During my years in karate you lose a child, you lose a parent, you lose a former student, you lose a student, you lose an instructor.

Karate is after all a shared group experience, intermixed with your life, family and friends and students. We train hard, focus intensely at times, but in the mixture of isshin and zanchin that possess us we never are really prepared that such losses accompany our studies.

May we all give thanks today for our blessings, for those who've shared the lines of our lives, for the memories that we retain of our departed friends.

2009