Those Who Went Before
To warn you, this is going to sound like a slightly evolved version of something you doubtless wrote when you were sixteen.
I love my parents very much and I fear that this becomes a large part of the problem. They've always been very supportive of me, but with this support comes expectations. They expect that I will be like them, share the same values they do, and ultimately seek out the same quality of life that they do.
This is quite natural, I suppose. I think most parents use their own existence as a benchmark for whether their children are (or are not) "on the right track". With all the parents I know, there seems to be a level of pain that comes when they start perceiving things in their children that they did not put there, or do not understand. Divergence in world view, etc. always seems to create some dissonance.
Again, I believe this is a natural phenomenon. But it is difficult.
My parents took great pains to make sure I was extensively educated in the humanities: art, music, philosophy, literature... they encouraged my soaking up of these things. They put me with teachers who extolled them. As a result, I've become very much a humanist. I view money as important, but only insofar as it pays the bills and enables more important things (read: human interaction). I do not view lucre is an end, in and of itself. I'm more concerned with the human condition and the human journey. Obtaining money is a small part of it.
My parents have a hard time dealing with this view of the world.
Following my various teachers' mandates to go and make a difference, helping people, putting myself in difficult places, I decided to go into criminal law. My parents disapprove because it is dangerous and because it is not extremely lucrative. They would have been happier if, after all those years studying the human condition, I just put it aside and got an MBA, joining the working world in the ultimate pursuit of money.
That just ain't me. That ain't ALIVE. Almost all the truly happy people I know don't devote their entire lives to making money. All the happy people I know devote their lives to something else that they love, and money is an irritating stop along the way.
Experience has given me a firm belief that a corvette and a five-bedroom house do not a good life make. Most of the really wealth-driven people I know feel as if something is wrong with their life, but they can't quite put their finger on it. In the past, I used to resort to consumerism when I felt out of sorts. The bright, shiny baubles I bought were a temporary distraction, but the emptiness I felt always crept back in. I think that "money-focused" careers are pretty much that same phenomenon, only much bigger in scale.
I've tried to explain this to my parents, but it often seems as if I'm speaking a different language.
What's probably more difficult is Aikido. They really don't understand it. They view all martial arts as the same; cheap storefront Tae Kwon Do classes taught to small children-- a daycare novelty. Nothing to be taken seriously. In their view, adults who continue training in martial arts are pursuing some childish fantasy that has no "real" value.
Last year, Dad asked if he could borrow my sword and keikogi for a drunken costume party. No matter how I tried, I couldn't seem to make him understand why such a request was repugnant and offensive.
On some level, I realize that my pursuit of Budo is something that the majority of people will not understand or care about. This is common when training in America, and even in Japan. One of my senior teachers, who has been training for over 50 years and has affected more lives than I can count (including mine), confided in me that no one in his family, other than his son, had ever SEEN him practice Budo, much less gain any appreciation for what it meant.
My own teacher, an unassuming and unremarkable-looking man, is one of the most admirable and skillful people I have ever encountered. There are days in the dojo where I feel like he is rooting around in my psyche in a way more skillful than any therapist I've ever met. I doubt if more than ten people will ever have the focus to train under him long enough to appreciate what he has cultivated with his years of hard work.
One of the reasons people who train as we do for a long time become like family is because they are some of the few people that really "get it". Despite what harsher (read: more deluded) practitioners will tell you, it is wonderously rewarding (and perhaps necessary) to have SOMEONE else appreciate what you work hard for.
Common understanding of an uncommon thing is a very strong human tie, indeed.
I realize that the reward for this practice IS the practice, and that those who really do it will not end up famous or enshrined, but as I say, it is difficult for me. I've not yet come to a place where I can accept that gracefully.
Theoretically, it shouldn't matter whether or not my parents understand or agree with the choices I've made in my life. Those things don't affect the ultimate merit of my pursuits. But like all children, on some level, I want my parents to admire and respect what I've done with my life, and it pains my very deeply that they don't. When I am in their home, I am loved, but not respected.
That's bitter medicine to swallow.
My brother is a contractor. His hobby is working on cars. My folks understand these things and express expansive admiration for them. There are nights when, witnessing this, it feels like slow knife turning inside of me as they turn their talk towards my pursuit and cover their awkwardness with graceless jokes and implications that the directions of my life are a "phase", and not the conscious choice of an aware human being.
In closing, I can't help but think of something a tai chi teacher told me not too long ago.
"So, you want to be a teacher?"
"Yes."
"Are you ready to be ridiculed, unappreciated, and peniless until you're 45?"
"What happens at 45?"
"You stop caring."
Hopefully such will be the case, because it really does hurt right now.
See? Just what I promised. A long, poorly written rant about how my folks don't understand me, worthy of any sixteen year old with an album by The Cure.
- Ken
I love my parents very much and I fear that this becomes a large part of the problem. They've always been very supportive of me, but with this support comes expectations. They expect that I will be like them, share the same values they do, and ultimately seek out the same quality of life that they do.
This is quite natural, I suppose. I think most parents use their own existence as a benchmark for whether their children are (or are not) "on the right track". With all the parents I know, there seems to be a level of pain that comes when they start perceiving things in their children that they did not put there, or do not understand. Divergence in world view, etc. always seems to create some dissonance.
Again, I believe this is a natural phenomenon. But it is difficult.
My parents took great pains to make sure I was extensively educated in the humanities: art, music, philosophy, literature... they encouraged my soaking up of these things. They put me with teachers who extolled them. As a result, I've become very much a humanist. I view money as important, but only insofar as it pays the bills and enables more important things (read: human interaction). I do not view lucre is an end, in and of itself. I'm more concerned with the human condition and the human journey. Obtaining money is a small part of it.
My parents have a hard time dealing with this view of the world.
Following my various teachers' mandates to go and make a difference, helping people, putting myself in difficult places, I decided to go into criminal law. My parents disapprove because it is dangerous and because it is not extremely lucrative. They would have been happier if, after all those years studying the human condition, I just put it aside and got an MBA, joining the working world in the ultimate pursuit of money.
That just ain't me. That ain't ALIVE. Almost all the truly happy people I know don't devote their entire lives to making money. All the happy people I know devote their lives to something else that they love, and money is an irritating stop along the way.
Experience has given me a firm belief that a corvette and a five-bedroom house do not a good life make. Most of the really wealth-driven people I know feel as if something is wrong with their life, but they can't quite put their finger on it. In the past, I used to resort to consumerism when I felt out of sorts. The bright, shiny baubles I bought were a temporary distraction, but the emptiness I felt always crept back in. I think that "money-focused" careers are pretty much that same phenomenon, only much bigger in scale.
I've tried to explain this to my parents, but it often seems as if I'm speaking a different language.
What's probably more difficult is Aikido. They really don't understand it. They view all martial arts as the same; cheap storefront Tae Kwon Do classes taught to small children-- a daycare novelty. Nothing to be taken seriously. In their view, adults who continue training in martial arts are pursuing some childish fantasy that has no "real" value.
Last year, Dad asked if he could borrow my sword and keikogi for a drunken costume party. No matter how I tried, I couldn't seem to make him understand why such a request was repugnant and offensive.
On some level, I realize that my pursuit of Budo is something that the majority of people will not understand or care about. This is common when training in America, and even in Japan. One of my senior teachers, who has been training for over 50 years and has affected more lives than I can count (including mine), confided in me that no one in his family, other than his son, had ever SEEN him practice Budo, much less gain any appreciation for what it meant.
My own teacher, an unassuming and unremarkable-looking man, is one of the most admirable and skillful people I have ever encountered. There are days in the dojo where I feel like he is rooting around in my psyche in a way more skillful than any therapist I've ever met. I doubt if more than ten people will ever have the focus to train under him long enough to appreciate what he has cultivated with his years of hard work.
One of the reasons people who train as we do for a long time become like family is because they are some of the few people that really "get it". Despite what harsher (read: more deluded) practitioners will tell you, it is wonderously rewarding (and perhaps necessary) to have SOMEONE else appreciate what you work hard for.
Common understanding of an uncommon thing is a very strong human tie, indeed.
I realize that the reward for this practice IS the practice, and that those who really do it will not end up famous or enshrined, but as I say, it is difficult for me. I've not yet come to a place where I can accept that gracefully.
Theoretically, it shouldn't matter whether or not my parents understand or agree with the choices I've made in my life. Those things don't affect the ultimate merit of my pursuits. But like all children, on some level, I want my parents to admire and respect what I've done with my life, and it pains my very deeply that they don't. When I am in their home, I am loved, but not respected.
That's bitter medicine to swallow.
My brother is a contractor. His hobby is working on cars. My folks understand these things and express expansive admiration for them. There are nights when, witnessing this, it feels like slow knife turning inside of me as they turn their talk towards my pursuit and cover their awkwardness with graceless jokes and implications that the directions of my life are a "phase", and not the conscious choice of an aware human being.
In closing, I can't help but think of something a tai chi teacher told me not too long ago.
"So, you want to be a teacher?"
"Yes."
"Are you ready to be ridiculed, unappreciated, and peniless until you're 45?"
"What happens at 45?"
"You stop caring."
Hopefully such will be the case, because it really does hurt right now.
See? Just what I promised. A long, poorly written rant about how my folks don't understand me, worthy of any sixteen year old with an album by The Cure.
- Ken