When you really learn

 

At the time I began to go out an train when possible with many other martial instructors, nobody expected that I would gain anything from it. For myself I just wanted to work with adults (none available for me at that time and I knew I needed adults to have some work with) and none of those instructors were but being nice allowing me to train with them. They never attempted me to learn their systems.

 

But learn I did, for I had been taught by Charles Murray’s instruction to learn and then work to retain what I was shown even once. And in some part I did.

 

I saw many things which were not shown in the Isshinryu I studied. Found them interesting, and then worked to understand how they worked on my own to make them my own. No doubt not always the same as the original, but if I could make them work that was more than enough for me.

 

Let me give an example during the time I was studying t’ai chi and some Chinese forms with Ernest Rothrock, one Saturday afternoon I was at his school working on my forms. While there I saw him working with one of his students for a demo they were to do. Now applications of those forms were not what I was studying and found his demo interesting.

 

I vividly remember one attack where he just walked into the attack, spun taking his attacker down and ‘completing’ his defense on the floor ending the attacker. I had never seen anything like that before. I had no idea what happened and right before my eyes. But I did know it occurred.

 

I did not immediately work on it. Years later I retained the memory of it happening. Then I went to  work as to how he could have done that. We were close friends by that time, I could have asked, but I wanted more than works, I wanted to know it, own it, and be able to perform it. In time I worked out an answer for myself.

And at that time that was all it was.

Several years later he was in Derry along with a group of martial artists who then worked out together and shared. That afternoon I saw him perform that defense again, and what I worked out was pretty much the same thing. It was part of my personal understanding of how things worked.

 

I have so many examples of my working out things I did not understand from him, Tristan Sutrisno and many other people. What things, my own memories after all. Some shared with my students when it made sense, some never shared because the right time never came up. But that is just what happened.

 

The real lesson is that I saw, I thought and then went to work 

to make what I saw possible for me.

 

What you gain by working it out for yourself, is more valuable than just hearing the answer. You took the effort to make it yours.