Karate Lessons from the Blueberries

On my back acre I have about 100 large Blueberry bushes. They came with the property when I bought it and with a minimum of maintenance we normally get a large crop each summer for friends and neighbors who want to drop by and pick them.

What I’ve discovered over the years is how many lessons picking blueberries have to the study of karate.

1. We net our berries to keep the birds off. When they start to ripen you have to lift the net up and start picking all that are blue. In a while you’ve picked all that you saw ripe and move on the next bush, but as you move there you turn your head and discover whole lot of blueberries you missed, so you turn back and pick everything you find and then move on. Working around the next bush you look back and discover, again, a whole lot of ripe berries on the original bush.

What you discover is how the bush leaves hide berries from any perspective you view the bush from, and to truly get every ripe berry you have to keep changing your perspective, lift branches up, hunker down and look up.

Kata applications are just like that. It really doesn’t matte what the original creator meant a technique to use, if you keep your perspective and see one answer that you can make work you’ve succeeded. Later if you look at the kata a new way, perhaps against an entirely different attack you can find a new use, and in time you might discover so many different uses for one move as perspectives of where the blueberries are hiding on the bush.

2. When you pick berries you can stay on one bush and not move until you’ve grasped every perspective to find every actual berry. Or you can be a grazer and move from bush to bush always looking for the sweeter, larger, more succulent berry. If the crop is true, for about the same amount of time picking you get the same amount of berries in either case.

Train 20 years and study one kata and make it work for you, or train 20 years and study 50 kata and find enough answers to make them work for you. You’ll find that it’s not the number of kata you study, but that for 20 years you’ve worked on whichever answer you follow.

The secret isn’t the number of bushes you pick from or the number of kata you practice. The secret is hard work for the same time yields similar results, enough berries or enough technique studies so your art works.

3. You can’t give anything away for free. My berries don’t cost me anything but some work to net the bushes and at times cut some grass. We’ve always allowed any friends, neighbors and acquaintances to come and pick as they wish. I’m sure in the last quarter century at least 200 people have take advantage of our offer, for one time.

But they don’t come back the next year to pick more.

The berries don’t care if you don’t pick them they will fall to the ground. We’ve exhausted our personal desire to use them long ago. The years of making blueberry everything or 20 cases of jam are over and I always make clear they’re there for the taking.

But they don’t come back. I think I’ve worked out why, guilt. Guilt perhaps for getting free berries. Guilt perhaps because they or their kids no longer train with me. They don’t understand by they’re not picking them, I’m not and the berries keep falling.

I teach for free, many have called me the dumbest karate instructor in existence for doing so, especially as we have a real quality program. And when they stop we never hear from them again, whether they trained one year or 20 years with me.

I suppose I understand they might feel awkward about no longer training but I understand everyone does what they have to do in the long run. My program keeps moseying along whether they’re there or not. In the end everyone does what they have to do. All young people will leave your program because they grow up. Personal reasons, age, different interests, etc. all are reasons to leave me. I have never felt any of them betrayed me by their choice.

It’s just they’re no longer around and the berries keep falling regardless.

Some people pick blueberries for the berries. I pick blueberries but never take my mind off of my training and teaching. That and I remember each one who used to come and wish they still were around.