Time
does fly it has been 20 years since I bought “Martial Musing” by Robert Smith
for I got it when it was published in 1999.
It could be said Robert Smith could
have been on of my earliest martial hero’s as when I was a beginner I bought a
cheap copy of his and Donn Drager’s Asian Martial Arts. Rereading its
descriptions of so many arts over and over, wondering what they were actually
like. Then I later purchased his books on T'ai Chi and PaQua, Hsing Yi and more.
Having
read it placed it on my bookshelf and there it remained.
I
once wrote a letter to Robert and he answered back. That answer was so
remarkable I saved the reply on my blog
Now
re-reading the book, I discover he wrote it about the same age as I am right
now or close enough to make me think about what he accomplished.
The
shortages of today made this passage from his book seem most relevant.
Page
3
“Generally,
I incline towards the Daoist view of life, believing that if we all followed
nature we’d find that less is better, and small is indeed beautiful. Key here is the notion of nothing in excess.
We exercise or fail to exercise too much.
We eat too much, compete too much, have sex too much, win too much. We sleep too much, think too much, do too
much, and talk too much…..Perhaps we even write too much. Mad William Blake’s
words catch us well: “Too much/enough”.
If there is anything to the theory that there is only certain amount of
pleasure allotted to each of us, then perhaps we should spread it thinner so it
will last longer…”
Of
course there is much more, but I feel this fits the day.
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