Excuses vs. solutions

A few weeks ago, two new young students, around 20 years old, joined the dojo. Apparently, they’re friends (anyway, they speak another language between themselves, maybe Jewish, but I’m not sure). Naturally, they constantly run into the same problems that I experienced as a complete beginner.

One of the first problems they ran into is sitting in seiza. While one of them puts his will at stake in order to try to overcome this kind of problems, the other one is visibly affected by them and… well, kind of lazy.

He was told a few times to straighten up his posture, without having the shoulders curved inwards and leaving the hands relaxed, heading towards the knees. He kept complaining that it was a very uncomfortable position and he was assured that almost everybody finds this posture difficult, but that in time you get used to it and, surprisingly, after a while you’ll even find it quite comfortable. He didn’t seem enthusiastic knowing he would have to put up with dealing with this position for a longer or shorter amount of time, until it would become OK.

Last week, while explaining something, when we were all lined up in seiza, Sensei noticed his stance (shoulders curved inwards, curved back and having the upper body weight sustained by the hands, which were visibly held rigidly against the legs) and told him to correct his posture. Seeing the student didn’t seem to do this quite full-heartedly, he held a brief lecture, telling us that if you were to imagine any process as a journey, then, in order to reach a certain goal, you’ll often find that the road that leads there is full of obstacles. But you don’t have to despair… you can choose to try your best, and slowly, one by one, bypass those obstacles, or you can choose as well to change your mind, turn around 180 degrees, head back and search another path to reach that goal you want to achieve or even forget it completely.

Everybody has the power of choice within his immediate reach; and judging from how people react when being confronted with such difficulties, you find that the way to perceive those obstacles is different, depending on the person:

While a person might find these obstacles to be his excuses, saying to himsef “I can’t do this thing – because of this obstacle”, there’s also the other kind of person that, when seeing the obstacle standing there in front of him, says to himself “Here’s an obstacle – I need to find a solution to get past it”.

So, you see, the freedom of choice is yours. It depends on you solely if you will choose to find excuses or solutions.

Although it’s one of the universal truths… this really makes you think :) At least when it’s “spelled out” so directly. As for myself, if I really am into something, then the choice was already made (one of the most difficult things for me, as I said in an earlier post, is to make up my mind and actually start something) – it means that I’m willing to put every resource available at steak in order to achieve the goal I’m heading for.